The Burning Air (6 page)

8

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2013

M
ORNING MADE A million-dollar necklace of the spiderweb that spanned the kitchen window. A heavy white mist had settled in the valley overnight, and the cold sun struggled to cast a milky, opaque light. Only the nearest parts of the garden were visible: the sooty patch of land where the bonfire had been and the gouged earth of the trenches.

Leo and Charlie had an uneven wrestling match under the coffee table. Toby had reached the chapter about the twentieth century in his book of maritime disasters. “Ask me
anything
about the
Titanic
,” he said to anyone whose glance crossed his.

Tara was in the sitting room wearing a Slanket and nursing a mild hangover. By the kettle, Jake heaped a cup of tea with sugar. Sophie caught his eye and he flushed, caught red-handed in the shameful act of caring for his mum.

“Just as well we had the bonfire yesterday,” observed Rowan. “We’d have had the devil to fight to get the wood to burn on a day like today.” He went around closing the windows as he always did when the air was thick.

Sophie privately thought that the strange atmosphere within the house was far more threatening than any conditions outside it. She could no longer blame the unsettled mood on the stranger in their midst. After the previous night’s outburst, she had to admit that some (all?) of the responsibility lay with her. Sleep had dispersed the ambiguities and confusions that had led to her flare-up, leaving her only with a sense of shame that was compounded by the fact that the children had witnessed it. It must then be up to her to salvage what was left of the weekend, to remind all of them that they could still unite in pleasure as well as grief.

She had changed her mind about scattering Lydia’s ashes. She was fairly confident that if she did not mention the subject again no one would press the matter. With Edie on her hip, Sophie went to Rowan’s room to check that the urn was still safe. She placed Edie on his pillow and ran her fingers over the bedclothes and then through them, feeling uneasy first at this intimate trespass and then because she found nothing. Panic had begun to brew in her belly when she noticed the urn standing alone at one end of the shelf that had been cleared of all of Lydia’s things. This time she did not recoil but picked it up. It was surprisingly light. The ashes shifted like the sand in Edie’s toy maracas as she tilted it first to the left and then to the right. How could someone so determined, so full of life as her mother, diminish to this?

“I think it might be starting again, Mum,” she said to the urn, almost laughing because if talking to a pot of carbon dust didn’t signify that all was not well, what did? “What should I do? What would you do?” The answer was as clear as if Lydia had spoken: she would have turned to her husband, as she always did. Sophie saw with piercing clarity that if she was going to survive this, if it was happening again and she was not to be consumed by it, she needed Will on her side. They might not have the unassailable marriage of her parents, but neither was it irretrievably broken down, not yet. The children were already aware of the frost between their parents, and Toby and Leo were old enough to remember what Sophie had been like last time. She could not do this to them again. Perhaps the real purpose of this weekend was not to heal the family that had made her but to save the one she had created.

•   •   •

Felix suggested giving Kerry a guided tour of the valley. Everyone went, even though they all knew the land well enough to walk it blindfolded—which was just as well, as the mist thickened in pockets, so that visibility was sometimes reduced to a few feet. Even Jake didn’t demand to be left alone in the barn with his phone, although the way he remained a steady five paces behind Kerry, who was wearing tight black leggings and a short jacket, suggested he might be motivated by something other than familial solidarity.

“Jake’s got a stiffy!” Leo told Toby in a stage whisper, at which Will stuck his second son under his arm, carried him like a surfboard, and gave him a sotto-voce dressing down underneath a tree.

Sophie made several attempts to fall into step with Kerry and make the apology she still owed her, but it was something she wanted to do in private, and there was always someone demanding something of her, a small hand to be held as they crossed uneven ground, or an adult wanting to finalize plans for the evening.

They took turns carrying Edie. At nine months, Charlie had refused to be held by anyone other than his mother. Sophie’s back was grateful that her daughter would ride happily in other arms, even if her heart sometimes struggled to see it that way.

The only landmarks—a neighboring farmhouse and the road beyond it—were miles away in the haze. They trudged up to the scattering of shacks and huts in various stages of decay that had witnessed many a childhood game of hide-and-seek and sardines. The only structure whose purpose was recognizable was the old cottage.

“We used to play here when we were little,” Felix explained to Kerry, who had been carrying Edie for the last half mile or so. “We’d take camp beds out there sometimes in summer. It’s a complete death trap, obviously.” He stood on tiptoe and pulled gently at a slate. It slid to the ground, bringing several of its neighbors thudding down with it. “Didn’t seem to bother Mum and Dad when we were little, but now it’s all sealed up in case the precious grandchildren break a fingernail or stub a toe in there.”

Kerry nodded gravely, shifting Edie a little higher on her hip. Sophie suppressed a stab of jealousy at the baby’s ease with this relative stranger.

She was walking in silence with Tara when Toby shouldered his way between them and slipped his hands into theirs. Over his head, the sisters exchanged looks that said, He hasn’t done this for a while, and then, I wonder what he wants.

“What time are we all going to the Tar Barrels tonight?” said Toby.

“I think you’ll be going with Daddy and Grandpa and everyone,” said Sophie. “But I’ve got to stay in and look after Edie. She’s much too little to take.” She turned to Tara. “I’m not even sure whether I should be bringing Charlie, to be honest.”

“Oh, Mum,” said Toby, “you
always
stay with Edie. You never do anything with us anymore. Girls are crap.”

“Don’t say ‘crap.’ It’s not because she’s a girl, it’s because she’s
little
. And she won’t be this young forever.”

“Yeah, well,” said Toby. “I’ll be a grown-up by then, and you won’t even care. You don’t care about anyone else since she was born.”

“Toby, that’s not true!”

“It is. Whatever. No one gives a
crap
if you’re there or not.”

He stomped off and was swallowed by the mist.

“I could always stay here and look after Edie,” said Kerry, suddenly materializing at Sophie’s right shoulder. “I don’t like the sound of all this fire and crowds and stuff.”

The thought of leaving Edie alone with anyone but family made Sophie panic. Instead of the planned apology to Kerry she found herself on the offensive. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Here, let me take her.” She hadn’t meant to snatch, or for her tone to be so abrupt, but she left Kerry standing with empty arms, whispering a bewildered apology. Sophie walked on and stared fixedly ahead but could feel Tara’s eyes on her.

“What?” she said.

“Give that poor girl a break. Why shouldn’t she look after Edie? Why are you always too proud to take help when it’s offered?”

Sophie was stunned. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Me and Matt were just saying how it would be good if you came out tonight. I mean, that it would do
you
good.”

“Oh, I’m glad my private life provides material for your pillow talk.”

Tara clicked her tongue. “Soph, don’t be so bloody defensive. We’re all trying to help you, if only you’d let us.” Now she looked down at her feet. “And anyway, Toby’s right. The boys aren’t blind.”

“Tara, that’s bullshit!” How
dare
Tara judge her? How could someone with only one child know what it was like to love four?

“I’m sorry if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick,” said Tara, in a flat voice that implied neither regret nor misinterpretation.

•   •   •

What light had struggled through the fog was fading but the boys, led by Jake, were playing MacBride cricket, a game of their own devising with some balding tennis balls, Rowan’s old school cricket bat, and, incongruously, a basketball hoop instead of a wicket. Sophie sat in the mudroom and kicked off her jacket, wrestling Edie out of her onesie. Will came and crouched at their feet, pulling off Edie’s wellingtons. Edie slid off Sophie’s lap and slithered into the kitchen.

“Tara says that Kerry offered to babysit Edie, but you said no,” said Will, addressing Sophie’s knees. “
I’d
really like it if you came out tonight. Have a drink, get some fresh air. It’d do you good. I don’t mind driving.”

“It’s just, I don’t think Edie’s old enough to be left on her own.”

She knew what he was thinking: Edie was older than Charlie had been when she abandoned him in the supermarket. It would have been an easy weapon for him to wield, and Sophie respected him for mastering the impulse.

“I haven’t got any formula with me, let alone bottles or anything like that.”

“Soph, she’s nine months old. She ate a plate of baby pasta bigger than her head at lunchtime. She’s hardly going to starve.”

“We don’t know Kerry that well.”

“I gather Felix is quite familiar with her. And more to the point, Edie
loves
her. You’ve seen what they’re like together. What’s going to happen out here, anyway?” Will swallowed, hard. “Please, Sophie, just do it for me, for the boys, for
us
 . . . for you. Put someone other than Edie first. It’s just one evening. How often do we get free babysitting? Edie loves Kerry, you can see that.
Please,
Sophie. We
miss
you.” His expression so reminded her of Toby’s that even if she had not made a pact with herself fully to return to her marriage she would have been powerless to resist. She felt a bittersweet relief as she surrendered, the flood plain sacrificing itself for the greater good of the city.

“OK, fine,” said Sophie. “Edie can stay here with Kerry. I’ll come with you.”

“Really?” he said. He was still kneeling before her, in a strange echo of the position he had adopted when he asked her to marry him. Then he had taken her hands in his, but this time he held out his arms. After only a second’s hesitation she slid to the floor, fell into him, and held on tight to him for the first time since Edie’s birth. His familiar body had changed completely. How had she not noticed how much weight he had lost? Where once had been solid, lean muscle she could now feel ribs, a collarbone, vertebrae. His grip on her tightened.

“You know that if it starts . . . if you get ill again, if you can’t cope, you know I’m here, don’t you? You know you can trust me, that I’ll never hurt you again? You know how much I regret it, don’t you? Do you know that?”

Sophie wanted to shake her head but found herself nodding. Her shoulder grew wet with his tears.

•   •   •

Sophie fed Edie, changed her into pajamas and her sleeping bag, placed Cloth Rabbit in the corner of the cot, laid out baby wipes and nappy cream and the changing mat across the floor so that everything Kerry might need was easily and instantly accessible. She wrote her mobile number and Will’s in large print, as if Kerry were visually impaired, and Blu-Tacked the piece of paper to the wall above the telephone, telling her to call if she was in any doubt at all about anything. She was still issuing instructions as the others sat outside in the cars, Tara and Matt in the sports car, everyone else in the people-carrier. Jake, thrilled at the prospect of legroom, called shotgun.

“She shouldn’t need changing again now unless she’s dirty. If she does, there’s a new packet of nappies by her cot. All you need to do is keep her awake for the next half hour, so you could read to her.” There was a tooth-marked copy of
The
Very Hungry Caterpillar
on the coffee table: Sophie thrust it into Kerry’s hands. “She likes this one.”

Outside, Will sounded the horn.

“Come on, Mum, you big snail,” shouted Leo.

“Do say if you don’t want to do this,” said Sophie.

“We’ll be fine,” said Kerry. With reassuring gentleness she took Edie’s wrist and guided the baby’s fat little hand into a good-bye wave. Sophie left her daughter with a blown kiss.

As they drove slowly into the thickening night, she was astonished to find herself relaxing. She had expected to feel as though she had left a part of herself behind, but she was eager, impatient, as if on the way to reclaim something much missed.

9

B
Y THE TIME their two-car convoy reached the steep roads around Ottery, the festival was well under way, and the streets had long been closed to traffic. Stewards in orange tabards directed them into a makeshift carpark in a bumpy field. Jake had a parallel social circle in the town, boys and girls whose parents also had second homes in the area. They were in year-round touch on Facebook, and he had been in constant contact with them since coming within range of a mobile phone signal. By the time they parked the car, he had a gang of friends waiting for him at the edge of the field. Sophie gave an internal stutter at the realization that the last time she had seen these teenagers, who all seemed to have cans in their hands, they had been children not much older than Toby was now.

“Don’t forget, we’re all meeting back here at
eleven,
” said Tara, tapping the hood of the car. “If you’re late, I’ll get them to put out a lost-child announcement.”

“You wouldn’t.” Jake scowled.

“El-ev-en.”

They watched his back until he and his friends were blobs in the crowd.

The streets leading down into the town were steep. Smoke rose up to mingle with the mist so that the acrid, mineral vapor smelled damp. The first time Sophie had inhaled that smell had been more than thirty years ago, her hand in Lydia’s. Then, they would have to stop every few paces to catch up with someone Lydia knew from her own childhood. Tonight, many of those old faces, and those of their children and grandchildren, would still be present. Then, the crowd would have been a tenth of this size. Tonight, the place was overrun with people from all over the county, students from Exeter and foreign tourists. Then, you were lucky to see more than one police officer all night. Tonight, they lined the route in groups of two and three, and she wondered what percentage of the county’s constabulary was deployed here.

Matt and Tara walked ahead with Felix, who had thrown on the hoodie he always wore in crowds. Toby and Leo were circling each other with excitement, and Sophie was relieved to see that Charlie took his cue from his brothers, smiling and clapping when they did. As the streets narrowed and the crowd thickened, she made sure that each of her sons was attached to an adult. Matt kept his promise to carry Charlie on his shoulders, while Will took Leo’s hand and Rowan took Toby’s.

In the square, a woman wearing huge mittens made of sacking hefted a barrel of burning tar onto her shoulders to the whoops and catcalls of the crowd. When Sophie was a girl, the festival had been menfolk-only and the women were there to dress their wounds afterward.

Felix shrugged off his hood. A voice from somewhere in the throng said, “Halloween was last week, mate,” to a ripple of laughter, but it was impossible to tell who the culprits were. Felix’s exposed face fell, and Sophie experienced the same surge of protective anger she felt when one of her sons came home from school with tales of a big boy picking on him.

“Fuck this shit, I’m going to the pub,” said Felix.

“Oh,
Fee
 . . .” said Tara, but he had gone, shouldering his way toward the Lamb and Flag. The queue to the entrance was six deep but Felix parted it like Moses.

“I’ll go and make sure he’s all right,” said Matt, hoisting Charlie off his shoulders and placing him in Will’s arms.

With the ratio of adults to children in their party diminished but still over the crucial one-to-one, the remainder of the family made their way to the funfair, where it was easier to see: the heat, the lights, and even the sounds conspired to clear the mist. They bought the boys hot dogs and candy floss then gave them money to go on enough rides to make them throw it all up again. Toby and Leo came to blows over a pound coin.

“It’s mine, you asshole!” said Leo.

“Leo!”
said Sophie. “You are not American. The term you’re looking for is
arsehole
.”

The boys exploded into shocked, delighted laughter. Wasn’t that the first thing that had gone last time, her sense of humor? And hadn’t its return marked the beginning of her recovery?

“Want to come on the carousel with me?” said Tara, taking Charlie by the hand and waving a fiver at the warring older brothers. She threw a stage wink over her shoulder at Sophie and Will. Rowan caught sight of someone he knew and wandered over to bellow a conversation over the furious dance music pumping from every ride. She could tell from the dip of Rowan’s head and the answering hand on his forearm that he was breaking the news about Lydia.

Someone was trying to hold her hand. Automatically she looked down, then up again, to find the hand attached to Will.

“May I have this dance?” he said.

“What?” Sophie laughed. “It’s hardly ‘The Blue Danube,’ is it?”

“Dance with me.”

He dragged her over the bumpy ground in a clumsy waltz, both of them laughing. For the second time that weekend Sophie felt the butterflies of a teenager on a first date, but now with anticipation rather than dread. They trod on each other’s toes as they covered the ground between the dodgems and the ghost train. Frenetically remixed songs by Katy Perry and Lady Gaga battled for supremacy, but when he kissed her, it was as though someone had turned the volume down on the world.

“You’re laughing,” said Will, pulling away.

“I’m
smiling
. I feel about fifteen.”

“You look it,” said Will, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s all going to be all right, isn’t it?”

She answered him with a kiss. How incredible it was that a single night out with her husband—and, she could now admit to herself, away from Edie, whom she willingly let consume her—had done more to restore her sanity than any talking cure, any medication, ever could. It was so simple. Why hadn’t she done this months ago? It didn’t feel like an exaggeration to say that this evening had saved her life. She felt little eyes on her.

“That. Is. Disgusting,” said Toby with a pantomime retch.

“So gross,” confirmed Leo. “Can we have some more money?”

•   •   •

When the pocket money had twice been replenished and depleted, and Tara had pried Charlie from the carousel, the family made their way to the bonfire at the foot of the bridge. It was a twenty-foot conflagration of wood and crates, broken-up MDF wardrobes, and old bedframes. As they watched, someone threw a three-legged stool onto the teetering pyre.

They were well back from the source of the heat, but something had tipped Charlie from nervous wonder into terror. As the sound of the crowd competed with the roar of the flames, he buried his face in Will’s shoulder. Then, like a man climbing from between window ledges on a skyscraper he edged his way from his father to his mother until he was clamped onto Sophie, his fists in his eyes. He was rigid with fear, more like a toddler than a four-year-old.

“Ow, Charlie,” she said, feeling the pinch of his fingers through her coat. “No need for that.”

“Please don’t do it, Mummy,” he said.

“Charlie, stop it.” He tightened his grip. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t climb on the fire,
please
,” he said. Guilt rinsed through her.

“Oh, that was just me being silly yesterday. I promise I won’t do it again. Look, this bonfire’s big, and there are men standing around it to make it nice and safe.”

“No!” screamed Charlie. “I don’t like it! I want to go home! I hate it here!” He began to thrash. Will tried to pull Charlie’s little hands out of his eye sockets, but his fingertips became wet with his son’s tears.

“Come to Grandpa, Charlie,” said Rowan. “No blubbing, there’s a big boy.”

Charlie screamed, shriller than a firework. “I want to go home. I want to go
home
!”

Sophie and Will exchanged desperate looks, both recognizing a tantrum that had gone beyond the point of no return.

“What can we do?” said Sophie. “He’s terrified, and he’s exhausted. Maybe we should go back early.”

“Oh,
Charlie,
” said Will, ruffling the blond head as he thought. “Look, it’s only just gone half nine, it’s not fair to cut the other boys’ night short. I’ll be the quicker driver; if I drop him home now, Kerry can put him to bed and I can be back in time to get the rest of you at eleven. Hey, little man,” he said to Charlie. “Want to come home with Daddy? Go home and play with Kerry?”

“No!”
screamed Charlie, a small fist finding its way into Will’s face. “I don’t want you, and I don’t want Kerry, I want Mummy to take me back and I want Mummy to put me to bed.”

“It’s not worth it,” said Sophie, stroking Charlie’s hair, drawing on reserves of tenderness and patience deepened to the point of infinity by self-reproach. She was glad now that she hadn’t had a second glass of cider. “I’ll do it, give me the car keys.”

Will got them out of his pocket but dangled them over her palm and, with a feeling like a stone dropping through a well, Sophie understood why he was so keen that he be the one to drive Charlie back to the barn.

“You still don’t think he’s safe with me, do you?” she said. She had shouted to make herself heard over the noise and chaos and, although Tara didn’t acknowledge that she’d heard it, she gave an involuntary twitch.

“Soph, don’t be daft,” he said. “After everything I said this afternoon? I was actually thinking that if you took Matt’s car, there would be enough space in ours to bring everyone home, and you wouldn’t have to do that drive twice in the mist and the dark.” He half-turned to Tara. “You keep a spare key, don’t you?”

“Oh,” said Sophie. Of course he was right. By the time she had driven all the way back and settled Charlie, which might take hours . . . “Right. Tara, could I . . . ?”

The keys were in her palm before she finished the question.

Will kissed her, this time on the top of her head. “Wait up for me?” he said.

She fought her way through the throng with Charlie in her arms, whispering soothing nonsense in his ear until they reached the relative calm of the country lane and she felt his body submit into floppiness. He refused to get down and walk, though, and by the time she got to Matt’s car, she was exhausted, her legs ached, her back and shoulders were screaming in agony, and she was pouring with sweat. The relief when she set Charlie down on the ground was inexpressible. She took off her jacket, grateful for the cold shock of air on her hot, damp body, and folded it in half twice to make a makeshift booster seat for Charlie in the passenger seat.

Before she put the key in the ignition she checked her phone to see if Kerry had sent her an emergency voice mail. The screensaver, a picture of Edie asleep with Cloth Rabbit, was clear of messages.

•   •   •

Sophie could not remember having driven with such extreme care before. The mist was now a solid wall of white, a bizarre inversion of darkness. Had visibility been so poor when they left the house, they would not have risked driving in these conditions, festival or not. Headlights did little to disperse it, just spotlighted the whirlpools of vapor that spun in midair. She had not felt so nervous behind the wheel since her driving test: Will had been right; he was the more confident driver, he would have done a better job of this. The few cars she passed were all driving with the same tentative care that she exhibited. The fog was dense in patches, strange flashes of clarity before the cloud began to descend again, so that just when her eyes had adjusted, the situation would change and she was temporarily blind again. Fireworks would occasionally illuminate it, tinting the white mint or flamingo or iceberg. Her only consolation was that she was driving the zippy little automatic sports car through these lanes rather than her own lumbering people-carrier.

Charlie’s head hit his chest. Good; one less job for her to do when she got back to the barn. She would march him directly up to the bunker, wrestle him out of his boots, and let him sleep in the clothes he had on, she decided. Then she would check on Edie, kiss her or maybe just watch her for a few minutes, and after that talk to Kerry, maybe open some wine, see if she could coax some conversation from the girl.

She turned the car into the drive. Down here in the valley the mist was at its most solid and for a second she didn’t trust that the barn would still be there. She felt ridiculously relieved at the warm welcome of its lit windows.

Charlie was easy to scoop up out of the passenger seat and Sophie made straight for the stairs. On first sweeping glance she did not see Kerry in the sitting room. Perhaps she was upstairs with Edie. Had she woken to find Sophie not there? The thought was a knife. But there was no sound. If Edie
had
woken, Kerry was doing a good job of settling her again. On tiptoe Sophie mounted the stairs, reassured by the soft light that spilled out of her own bedroom.

She laid Charlie down on his bunk; pulled off his boots, socks, and coat; tucked him under his duvet; and closed the door firmly but silently behind her. With as light a tread as she could manage—although the house still made itself heard—she promised herself that she wouldn’t go in and distract Edie or wake her up, but that she’d just look in, check Kerry was coping all right without undermining her.

The room was exactly as Sophie had left it a few hours before, from the sealed packet of nappies to the counterpane hanging over the side of the empty cot, perfectly parallel to its base. Cloth Rabbit remained in pride of place at the head of the mattress. The sheet was smooth, the pillow plump. It had not been slept in at all.