Strangers (2 page)

Annie’s tongue moved, finding her lips. They were coated with dust, except for one corner that was clogged with sticky moisture. There was the brackish taste of her own blood. She was suddenly possessed by panic, more powerful than the nausea. She tried to roll sideways, to draw her knees up into the foetal position, and found that she could not. She was hurt, badly hurt, and she was trapped in total blackness.

Annie could hear screaming, a scream that went on and on, up and then down again as the sufferer gasped for breath. When it stopped she wondered if the screams could have been her own.

Where was she? What had happened?

Oh God, please help me
.

The screams had been hers. She could feel another one, the voice of pure terror, rising inside her. She clenched her teeth, and felt the grit crunch between them. She tried to swallow it, to clear her mouth, focusing on the smallest thing to keep the fear at bay. She could feel it all around her, like a living thing.

Think. Try to work out what had happened
.

Slowly this time, she tried to move. Her right side, arm and shoulder right across to her breastbone, and her hip and thigh, wouldn’t do anything. She was pinned down by something smooth, sloping upwards at an angle. She discovered it by feeling cautiously upwards with her left hand. On her left side, higher up, there was something jagged that felt both hard and crumbling at the same time. She gave up her useless search and let her arm drop to her side again. Legs. Where were her legs? She could feel nothing at all in the lower part of them. It was as if her body was clay that had been crumpled up and crudely remodelled, stopping short at the knees.

And her head, the pain in her head. She rolled it, just a little, to one side and then the other. There was perhaps an inch or two of play before the pain gripped her. Suddenly Annie realized that her hair was caught underneath something. She had taken her knitted hat off – how long ago? – inside the doors of the shop. Now something very heavy was resting on her spread-out hair, and the pain she felt was the roots of it tearing her scalp. So even if there had been nothing else touching her she would still be trapped here by her hair, forced to lie staring upwards, into – into what?

There was only the pitch dark, not a sound except the threatening patter of falling fragments when she moved her arm. The fingers of her left hand fluttered, feeling the rough brick, splintered wood.

She was shuddering now, fully conscious, cold to her bones.

What would happen to her?

Annie screamed again as the fear lurched close and threatened to smother her. When the sound of it died away a voice said, very close to her, ‘Stop. Stop screaming.’

It wasn’t her own voice, she knew that. It was a man’s. A stranger’s.

At the sound of it, she remembered. Before the noise came, before even the silent wind and the shock that had spun her round into a rain of splintering glass balls, there had been a man. That was it. When she had still been Annie, walking calmly to the exit with a carrier bag of Christmas tree decorations, a man had come up behind her and pushed open the door. Out of the corner of her eye, in that last instant, she had seen his hand and arm.

Fear moved right inside her now. Where was the man, how close to her? Annie struggled to make her thoughts fit together.

He must have done this, whatever it was. And if he could do something so cataclysmic what else would there be, when he reached her? To stop the shuddering Annie bit her lips, and tasted salt blood again. She must keep still, or he would hear her. She lay with her head turned as far as it would go towards where the voice had come from, staring wildly into the impenetrable dark.

‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think I can reach you, but …’

‘
If you come near me
…’ Annie had wanted to scream at him, but her words were a gasp. ‘If you come near me, I’ll kill you.’

There was a long moment’s quiet.

Then the man said softly, ‘It’s all right. Listen, can you hear the sirens? They’ll reach us. They’ll get us out.’

A solitary policewoman had been standing on the opposite pavement, checking the number plate of a grey van parked on the double yellow lines. The side of it had sheltered her from the blast, and she crouched in the gutter for an instant with her cheek against the cold metal. She heard screaming, and the traffic skidding wildly in the roadway, and the crash of breaking glass. Slowly, sliding her hand up the van’s side, she stood up. Under a cloud of black smoke she saw the front of the store. The roof had been blown open to the sky and she could see the inside where the floors hung, pathetically exposed, tipping downwards. Chunks of brick were still falling. In the roadway people were running, some of them away from the falling bricks, others towards them. There were other people lying on the pavement.

The policewoman left the shelter of the grey van and made herself walk across the road. The broken glass crunched under her polished black shoes. She held up one black-gloved hand to stop the traffic, as she had been trained to do. Her other hand reached inside her coat for the pocket transmitter, to call for help.

The first squad car came, weaving up the street between the slewed cars and buses, its lights blazing. The policewoman was kneeling beside a man whose blood seeped through the clenched fist pressed to his cheek. There was suddenly an eerie quiet, and she thought how loud the siren sounded.

Two policemen leapt out of the car as it skidded to the kerbside. One of them carried a loudhailer, and he lifted it to his mouth.

‘Get back. Get back and stay back.’

One by one the people who had been milling on the pavement began to move slowly backwards, a step at a time. They were looking up at the ruined façade of the store where the smoke still drifted in black coils.

‘There may be a further explosion. Please leave the area at once.’

They moved a little further, leaving the injured and those who were helping them, bewildered groups on the littered pavement.

Down in the darkness the man’s voice repeated, insistent, ‘Can’t you hear them?’

At last, Annie said, ‘Yes.’

‘I can’t hear you properly,’ the man said louder. ‘Say it louder.’

She repeated, ‘Yes,’ and then, suddenly, ‘What have you done?’

There was quiet again after that, and she heard something moving, close to her. Her skin crept in a cold wave.

‘I didn’t do it.’ The voice sounded even closer now. ‘It must have been a bomb, I think. Perhaps a gas explosion.’

A bomb.

In her mind’s eye, imprinted on the terrifying darkness, the word conjured up flickering images. There were the television news pictures of violent death amongst the rubble, a half-forgotten impression of the reddened dome of St Paul’s still standing amongst the devastation of the Blitz, and then the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.

A bomb
.

The images faded and left her in the dark again. Her eyes stung with the effort of staring into it. She understood that a bomb had gone off, and buried her along with the broken Christmas tree balls, the gaudy strands of tinsel and the heavy door she had been going to push open. It was the same door lying on top of her now, crushing her.

Annie was shivering violently.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said.

She sounded very shocked, the man thought. But she was conscious, and she had stopped screaming. He wondered if there was a chance of manoeuvring himself close enough to help. He eased himself sideways a little, reaching out with his right hand.

‘What are you doing?’ Her voice was sharp with the onset of panic.

‘Trying to reach you. Listen to me, carefully. Where are you hurt?’

He could almost hear her thinking, painfully exploring the inner contours of her body, just as he had done himself.

At last she said, ‘I can’t feel my legs. My side hurts. There’s something heavy on top of me. I think it’s a door.’

‘That’s good. It’s probably like a shield for you.’

‘And my hair’s caught. I can’t move my head.’

She had long, thick fair hair. He remembered seeing it as she walked to the exit in front of him.

‘Can you move any part of you?’ he persisted.

‘My arm. My left arm.’

Gently, he said, ‘Reach out with it, then.’

He heard a tiny clink, perhaps the buckle of her watch against broken masonry, and the soft scraping of her fingers as they moved towards him. He stretched his own arm, further, until the muscles ached, and the splinters scraped his wrist. And then, miraculously, their fingers touched. Their hands gripped, palm to palm, suddenly strong.

Annie thought,
Thank God
. The hand in the dark was so solid, the feel of it gripping hers almost familiar, as if she already knew the shape of it.

The man heard the sob of relief in her throat. Her hand felt very cold in his.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked into the blackness.

‘Annie.’

‘Annie. I’ve always liked the name Annie. Mine is Steve.’

‘Steve.’

It was a reassurance to repeat the names, an affirmation that they were still there, still themselves after the cataclysm.

Annie felt his thumb move on the back of her hand, a little stroking movement. The fear began to loosen its grip, and her breath came easier. She turned her head towards him, as far as she could. Her hair pulled at her scalp.

‘I thought you did it,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I was afraid of you.’

‘I didn’t do it. I was just doing my Christmas shopping, like you.’

Christmas shopping … the translucent glass balls that had been so expensive, the shiny ribbons and fir branches in the shop windows, the snow falling in the wintry streets. And now? To be buried, in this acrid darkness. How far down? She had the impression that she had fallen down and down, into a great pit. What was balanced above them, how many tons of rubble cutting them off from the sky and air?

Annie’s hair tore at the roots as she struggled, involuntarily.

‘Keep still.’ Steve’s fingers tightened over hers.

Annie heard the door creak over her face. Yes, she must keep still.

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I’m cut, here and there. Not badly. My leg’s the worst. I think it’s broken.’

Now Annie’s fingers moved, trying to lace hers between his.

‘Don’t let go,’ Steve said quickly.

‘I won’t. I’m trying to think. How can we get out?’ She was collecting herself now, trying hard to keep her voice level.

‘I … don’t think we can.’ The sound of the sirens came again, multiplying, but a long way off. ‘They’ll come for us, Annie. It won’t be long, if we can just hold on.’

Annie thought,
They won’t find us
. How can they? No one even knows I’m here. I didn’t tell Martin where I was going.

‘Who is Martin?’

It was only with the question that Annie realized she had been thinking aloud. All her senses were dislocated. She was looking, staring so hard that her eyes stung, but she couldn’t see. There were noises all around her now, not just the sirens but other, rumbling sounds, creaking, and the rattle of falling fragments. Yet she couldn’t tell whether they were real, or replaying themselves inside her head, like her own voice. And suddenly she had the feeling that she wasn’t trapped at all, but falling again, spreadeagled in the blackness. Annie clenched her fists and tilted her face upwards, deliberately, ignoring the pain in her head, until her cheek met the solid, cold, weighty smoothness of the door.

‘My husband,’ she said, willing the words to come out normally. She wasn’t falling any more. ‘Martin is my husband.’

‘Go on,’ Steve said. ‘Talk to me. It doesn’t matter what. Lie still, and just talk.’

Leaving home this morning. There were the three of them, watching her go, little Benjy in Martin’s arms and Tom swinging around the banister post. Before that, she had run to the top of the stairs, reaching up to brush her cheek against Martin’s. A goodbye like a thousand others, hurried, and she hadn’t even seen her husband’s face. It was so familiar, rubbed smooth in her mind’s eye by the years.

Suddenly, Annie felt her solitude. She was going to die, here, alone. But the hand holding hers was blessedly warm. Where had Martin gone, then?

I love you
. They repeated the formula often enough, not out of passion but to reassure each other, renewing the pledge. It is true, Annie thought. I do love him.

Yet now, trying to summon it up in pain and fear, she couldn’t see her husband’s face.

In its place she saw the garden behind their house, as vividly as if she was standing in the back doorway. Only a week ago. Martin was stooping with his back to her, his head half-turned, reaching for the hammer he had dropped on the crazy-paving path. She saw his hand, the torn cuff of the old jacket he wore for gardening, and heard the music coming from the kitchen radio.

They were working in the garden together. Martin had at last found time to repair the larchlap fencing that separated them from their neighbour’s voracious Alsatian. The boys had gone to a birthday party and they were alone, a rare two-hour interval of peace.

Annie was standing at the edge of the flower bed. The dead brown stalks of the summer’s anemones poked up beside her, acid with the smell of tomcats, and the earth itself was black and frost-hard. Her arms ached because she was holding up a bowed length of fencing, waiting for Martin to nail it in place. Neither of them spoke. Annie was cold, and Martin was irritable because he was an awkward handyman and the setbacks in the task had brought him close to losing his temper. He picked up the hammer and jabbed it at the nail, and the nail bent sideways. Martin swore and flung the hammer down again.

Annie was thinking back to the days when they had first bought the crumbling Victorian house, long before Tom was born. They had worked endless weekends, painting and hammering, because they couldn’t afford to employ builders or decorators. They would quarrel unrestrainedly then, launching themselves into blazing arguments over the coving that had been mitred wrong, the glaringly mistaken shade of paint, the tiled edge that rippled like waves on a lagoon. And then they would stop, and laugh about it, and they would go upstairs and make love in the bedroom where the last occupants’ purple and orange wallpaper hung down in ragged strips over their heads. Nine, ten years ago.