The Pull of the Moon (28 page)

Danny had been right about the soporific effects of the whisky. After a few mumbled declarations of love he fell asleep, while I lay beside him unable to follow where he had led. My mind had
been sluggish while we sat in the kitchen, but now it began to race. I kept going back to the moments in the wood. The images had become confused and my memory had begun to play tricks with the
soundtrack. It seemed to me that there was something important that I ought to remember, but when I pursued this memory along the path, the trees turned into criss-cross forks of lightning and I
had to turn back. Danny seemed to share my restlessness. His body gave a series of twitches and he muttered something inaudible a couple of times. Eventually his whole body gave a start and he woke
up. He lay completely still for a moment, then put out an exploratory hand which connected with my thigh.

I took advantage of his wakefulness to ask: ‘You remember when we were in the wood – when Trudie screamed?’

‘Of course I do.’ He spoke cautiously. Or maybe he was half asleep.

‘Where were you?’ I asked. ‘Were you anywhere near Simon? You’d been right by us a couple of minutes before.’

There was a pause. I could hear him breathing steadily in the darkness. ‘I couldn’t see anyone,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d play a joke on her. I was going to creep up
on her from behind. Then I got a bit disorientated and went too far. For a minute or two, when she screamed, I couldn’t find my way back.’

‘Did – did you hear anyone, crashing about on the path?’

‘Sweetheart, there were all sorts of noises – people yelling and trying to get to one another. Anyway, let’s not go over and over it. Try to forget it. It’s over
now.’

That was Danny, I thought, always ready to turn the page – and sure enough within a couple of minutes he was asleep again. I tried to emulate his approach. It had been a terrible accident
and all the agonizing in the world wouldn’t bring Trudie back. I tried to settle myself to sleep, but whether my eyes were open or closed I could still see Trudie. Not the dead Trudie –
I couldn’t allow that image to come screaming into my head – I saw the oh so alive Trudie, dancing for the rain gods on Hergest Ridge, laughing and singing in the garden. I saw her
golden body lying next to mine, in the exact same place where Danny lay now. Beautiful, beautiful Trudie. How could she possibly be dead?

I should have wept for her then, but the tears didn’t come – just an increasing sense of hopelessness and with it a raging thirst which I tried to ignore; but as I tossed from side
to side I became increasingly desperate for a cool drink. I wished Danny would wake up so that I could send him downstairs on my behalf, but he was dead to the world. He had closed the bedroom
door, but when I lifted my head I could see the telltale chink of light in the gap at the bottom which meant the landing was still lit up. I stared at this sliver of light for a long time, telling
myself that it would only take a few seconds to run down for a glass of water. Eventually I was so desperate that I slipped out of bed and switched on the lamp: partly in order to locate my
dressing gown and partly in the vain hope of accidentally waking Danny. He shifted in his sleep, but nothing more, not even flinching when I opened the door and the light from the landing shone
directly into his face.

I closed the bedroom door before tiptoeing to the stairs. The house was still swathed in dusty heat. The floorboards grumbled as I passed over them and each stair creaked on a different note,
like a badly tuned instrument. My bare feet made a soft, sticky sound on the hall floor.

‘Who’s there?’ Simon’s voice stopped me dead. I hadn’t realized he was still in the kitchen. It was too late to turn back now.

‘It’s me – Katy,’ I croaked out the words. The fear and tension in his voice were more unnerving than the shock of encountering him. He was sitting at the kitchen table
exactly where we had left him. He stared at me with bloodshot eyes that seemed to expect someone else.

‘I’m thirsty,’ I said.

‘It’s the alcohol,’ he said.

I didn’t bother to remind him that I hadn’t partaken. ‘It’s supposed to make you sleep.’

‘Well, it doesn’t,’ he said, grimly. ‘It just gives you a headache and messes with your mind.’

‘Danny’s asleep,’ I said – not exactly to dispute the point, more for something to say.

‘Lucky Danny,’ said Simon. Then he folded his arms on the table, put his head on to them and began to cry. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d never seen a man cry before. I
filled a glass with water, while trying to decide whether it was better to pretend not to notice. I drank the water at one go and refilled the glass. Simon’s shoulders continued to heave. His
sobs were faint but audible.

‘Is there something I can get you, Si?’ I asked nervously.

He raised his head and rubbed a bare forearm across his face. It took him a moment before he said: ‘Do you really think what we’ve done is wrong?’

I was taken aback. To start with, I hadn’t expected a direct question, and secondly I was confused by the note of accusation in his voice. There was a long pause. When I realized Simon
wasn’t going to fill it, I said, ‘Of course it was wrong – but Trudie was dead when we found her. Nothing could alter that. . .’

‘We were supposed to be her friends,’ said Simon. ‘But we didn’t stop it from happening.’ His face looked ashen, the way it had when I first told him the police had
arrived. He must be very drunk, I thought.

‘We couldn’t stop it,’ I said, in my best reassuring-a-child voice. ‘It was an accident. It wasn’t our fault.’ In my head I heard myself calling out his name
and his answer receding into the distance – then footsteps running back along the path. I told myself not to be an idiot. He was probably thinking cause and effect – that if only we had
taken more care not to get separated, she might never have dropped her torch and become fatally entangled in the wires; or maybe he was taking it back a stage further and thinking we should never
have gone down to the woods at all. I found myself unexpectedly flaring with anger against Trudie. It wasn’t our fault, I thought; it was hers. She shouldn’t have gone on ahead like
that. None of this would have happened if we’d stayed at the house. It was all Trudie’s stupid fault for insisting we go into Bettis Wood after dark in the first place. Trudie and all
her nonsense about bloody Murdered Agnes. Now the rest of us were stuck with the guilt and uncertainty, and those terrible images which were never going to go away. ‘It’s not our
fault,’ I said, robustly. ‘We were in a difficult situation and we had to make a choice.’ It was true that I might not have agreed with the choice we had made; but we were stuck
with it now.

‘A choice.’ He echoed my words, adopting a strangely ironical note. ‘We made our choice.’

‘You should go to bed,’ I said. ‘Try to get some sleep.’

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. Not now . . . not after today . . .’

‘What’s this – a midnight conference?’ Danny’s voice made us both jump.

‘I came down to get a drink – and Simon hasn’t been to bed at all.’

Danny regarded us irritably. ‘Better go to bed, man,’ he said to Simon. ‘That concrete guy’s due here at half eight.’ To me he merely said, ‘Come on,’
and jerked his head towards the stairs. He was right of course. We had to try to get some sleep.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Every picture tells a story. Here I am, just as the fat-bottomed nurse marches in, sitting at Mrs Ivaniso-vic’s bedside examining her valuables while she sleeps. The
nurse’s face registers an obvious reaction. We gape at one another – her wondering how to handle a visitor who has apparently turned up at the deathbed to indulge in a bit of pilfering,
me trying to find the best words to explain.

I open the case and hold it out for her inspection – that way she can see it isn’t a diamond bracelet. ‘She signalled for me to get it out,’ I say. ‘I think she
wanted to look at it. It belonged to her son.’

‘I didn’t know she had a son.’ She sounds doubtful.

‘He’s been dead a long time.’

She glances across at the ranks of framed photographs and light dawns. ‘Danny,’ she murmurs. ‘Of course – she
did
have a son, now you mention it. That’s him
in the photographs, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

She hands back the box and I snap it shut.

‘What happened to him, then? Motorbike accident, was it?’

‘Suicide.’ My voice has dropped to a whisper. It isn’t deliberate.

I can see she is intrigued, her original suspicions subsumed by the possibility of some gossip about a patient’s family. Suicide has potential connotations of tragedy and drama above and
beyond a mere road accident. She leans across me to check the fit of the oxygen mask, a manoeuvre which brings her large bosom into the space which I had thought to claim as mine. I lean back into
my chair, enveloped in an aroma of antiseptic handwash and spring-fresh fabric conditioner.

‘How long ago was all this then?’ Her accent tends toward the sing-song I associate with Newcastle. It reminds me of Josser.

‘1972.’

‘By – that is a long while. It must have broke her heart, poor soul.’ She nods in my direction, trying to imply that state of mutual understanding which encourages shared
confidences – in no hurry to get down to the nitty-gritty of patient care while something so interesting is on the conversational menu. ‘Why did he kill himself?’

I glance at Mrs Ivanisovic. She appears to be asleep, but how can one really tell? ‘No one knows,’ I say. ‘At the inquest they hinted that it might have been something to do
with his being gay.’

‘Oh.’ She hesitates. ‘Did
she
know he was gay?’

‘He wasn’t,’ I said. ‘He had a friend who was, which is why some people might have thought that – but he wasn’t gay himself.’

‘Aah.’ She looks smugly knowing. ‘Well, maybe he was but he hadn’t come out. Lads didn’t in them days. Maybe that’s why he killed himself – you know
– couldn’t face telling folk.’

Normally I just keep quiet. Let people think what they want: but something in her tone grates. How dare she think she has it cracked – she who only heard of Danny’s death half a
minute ago.

‘He wasn’t gay,’ I say.

‘Well, you never know—’

‘
I
know. I was engaged to be married to him when he died.’

As her face reddens in embarrassment, I feel instantly ashamed of myself. She has taken in my ringless wedding finger, my presence at his mother’s bedside, and is mortified by the innocent
trampling she has done. Moreover I was not even telling the truth. I was not engaged to Danny, whatever he or his parents may have thought – whatever I may have said to score a cheap point
over the fat-bottomed nurse, no such arrangement ever existed between us.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, sounding it, ‘but I’ll have to ask you to wait outside for a couple of minutes while I see to Mrs Ivanisovic’

I leave the room feeling that it is me who should be sorry. The woman with the pink rock chippings round her neck is just crossing the hall.

‘Are you popping out for a breather?’ she asks. ‘I think it’s stopped raining.’

‘I’ll just wait here, thanks. The nurse is in there at the moment.’

Pink Rocks lingers, nodding sympathetically. ‘She’s a remarkable old lady, isn’t she?’

I opt for safe agreement, uncertain precisely what it is about Mrs I that she is referring to.

‘Every day this week, Dr Brownlow has come out from seeing her, saying he doesn’t expect her to be with us by morning.’ While I stand in the hall, wondering if Dr Brownlow is
generally noted for such a cheering line in optimism, Pink Rocks twits on about how some people have this remarkable will to live. Maybe she thinks I can derive some comfort from this – or
maybe she secretly suspects that I’m a frustrated beneficiary, wondering how much longer Mrs Ivanisovic is going to lie here in Broadoaks, depleting her estate to the tune of a hundred pounds
or so with every passing day. I remember the situation we faced with my own mother – the pressure on hospital beds, the wait for suitable nursing-home places. No doubt some other rich old
lady is already waiting somewhere – her name down against Mrs Ivanisovic’s place – that nice room with its big bay window, so handy for the garden. Her family may have been told
that a room will shortly be available. They will be longing for the vacancy to occur – no one actually admitting that this entails the hope of another’s swift demise.

Does the nurse think about this as she ministers to her dying patient – wondering who will be the next occupant? Or maybe she is pondering another contradiction – that of the healthy
young son who couldn’t wait to leave life behind, set against the ancient mother who is holding on to it so tenaciously.

So many people all waiting for one old lady to die. A life flickering to its close. A faltering flame that could be snuffed out in an instant.

When I am allowed to return, I find Mrs Ivanisovic is awake. Her eyes follow my progress from the door to the bedside chair. I notice she is propped a fraction more upright and has a writing pad
and pen to hand on the bed. She must have signalled for the nurse to get them out. She appears more alert – I wonder if the nurse has administered something.

‘You’re looking a little better,’ I say.

She raises her eyebrows – a little better, a little worse, what does it matter? She applies pen to pad. The pad has been folded open at a clean page and the pen top has been taken off, so
she is free to start writing, but when she begins her efforts are feeble. She takes an age to produce a single word:
Why.
The letters are oversized and uneven. She doesn’t bother with
a question mark.

‘I can’t tell you,’ I say, shaking my head, affecting to be at a loss, while employing a version of the double speak with which children were taught to respond in wartime. It
is a piece of evasion which has amused me ever since I first read about it – a carefully engineered, typically British loophole. I think about this as Mrs Ivanisovic struggles to manipulate
her pen. How during the war, when signposts were taken down to foil the expected invasion, children were instructed to respond to enquiries from strangers seeking directions with the cosy middle
class expression ‘I cannot say’ – thus avoiding the words ‘I don’t know’, which would have been a lie. Thus was the enemy to be thwarted without anyone breaching
the commandments.