Star Shot (15 page)

No, says Theo, more decisively, moving round to face him properly … you can't…

And, says the young man, I should actually have started half an hour ago, but the stupid thing is, you know, I can't decide which
order
to do the colours in, whether to start with the white, the problem itself, or whether to end up there. Basically, I can't decide on the
narrative
. He points the paintbrush at Theo. What do you think?

I think, says Theo firmly, that you shouldn't touch that particular bench. I think you should leave it alone.

The artist gives him a lovely smile and shakes his head. No, he says, it's got to be this one, see, with the museum behind it. Look, stand here, you'll see what I mean. See? I'm going to splice in clips of the Parade – it's a film, the artwork is a film, of me painting the bench – and then some of the cctv shots of people turning back in despair. And bits from the interviews after. See?

Are you from the University?

Mm. Well, I'm an Independent Artist, obviously, but yes, they commissioned me for the Artistic Responses Project.

OK, says Theo. I do understand. But not this bench, I'm sorry. He deliberately moves the cans of paint onto the ground, and sits down on the bench with his arms folded.

The young man looks baffled. But it was this one in my project proposal, he says. I don't see how it could be anywhere else.

Try the castle, says Theo. The castle's the problem, not here.

But the footage… He is very disconcerted by now.

No, says Theo, and spreads out his long arms like wings along the top of the bench.
No
.

The artist pulls himself up to his full height, suddenly very dignified and stiff.

I don't think you have the right to stop me in any case. It's all cleared with the council, so you can't be from them. Who are you, anyway?

Theo just shakes his head and sits firm.

The man fumbles for his phone and starts jabbing for names and numbers. The office is shut on Saturdays, but Phoebe said anytime he needed her. He gets a wrong number, and tries again. Theo listens to him tripping over his own tongue, outraged and not terribly coherent, and wonders if he will miss the hospital appointment, and whether he should phone to tell them; and how long he might be prepared to sit on the bench, and under what kind of duress. It has started to drizzle a bit, which might put a halt to the painting for today anyway. Then he remembers Luke, and he too reaches for his phone.

46.

Elin from work has been and gone, with a pretty tin of homemade biscuits and disquieting news. At least, it should be disquieting, she thinks, carefully extracting two of the biscuits and rearranging the rest, pressing the lid back on tight. But it feels like news from a long way away, news from nowhere that matters, though of course it should matter, rumours of redundancies, and you-know-who making sorrowful comments in meetings about expensive sick-pay arrangements when healthy hard-working staff are in danger of losing their jobs.

And yes, Elin will admit she is worried, because she and Tony want to start a family, please don't tell anyone, and she knows that maternity leave, like illness, is a wedge in the door, that you may never get your hours back to what they were, that sometimes you don't get your old job back, you get landed with stuff way down the payscale, or in
deed you don't get any kind of job back at all. Bonny Elin, funny Elin, tired and anxious. Don't worry, said Myra, reassuring, they know they can't cope without you, you'll be fine, you go ahead and have that baby, that's what matters, don't let them stop you. And Elin had looked at her then with a kind of dawning despair, and taken her hand and cried a bit and said she was sorry for being so thoughtless, so selfish. No, said Myra, come on now, I'm fine; don't you be so daft.

Now she looks sleepily at the last half-lemon in the bowl near her bed, and thinks with satisfaction that she has something appropriate to give the woman in return. Biscuits are better than bluebells, as presents, especially when the bluebells are drooping a little, as hers are by now. She had come again this morning, after missing a couple of days, and had been pleased to find Myra sitting up drinking tea. That's better, she said. Those lemons are working.

They are, said Myra. I can feel a difference.

I'll bring you more, then, said the woman, if that's the last one.

Oh you mustn't, said Myra. I mean, I love them, they're beautiful, but you mustn't put yourself out. Here – let me give you some money for them, at least…

But of course when she had looked in her handbag and found her purse she had no real money, just coppers and useless cards. She hasn't needed money for so long that the whole idea of payment felt elaborate and awkward. She was perplexed, but the woman just smiled at her, pulled off one of her rubber gloves, and raised a worn index finger with a blue stone ring.

I'll bring one, she said. Just one. Fine?

Fine, said Myra. Thank you, very much.

You get well, said the woman, and trundled her cleaning trolley off down the corridor.

She had read for while then, one of Theo's odd books, and learned that
Genesistrine is a region in the Super Sargasso Sea, and that parts of the Super Sargasso Sea have rhythms of susceptibility to this earth's attraction
. She likes that. Rhythms of susceptibility. She thinks she probably has them herself. And then the new consultant had arrived, a fierce, likeable Scottish woman, to discuss the options for dealing with the symptoms of post-operative early-onset menopause, the possible ways of holding it at bay, so that she wouldn't be thrown from girlhood, or young womanhood, straight into a fragile and osteoporous old age, her bones as light and brittle as a bird, her hair dry and thinning. It's thinning anyway, she'd pointed out, from the chemo. I know, the consultant said, but it should come back. And then the nurse had taken her blood-pressure and decided that it might be edging a little closer to Normal. It's the lemons, Myra had explained, drowsily. They seem to be working. And they had agreed with her about the lemons, and left her to sleep.

The sleep was interrupted by Elin, who stayed for half an hour or so. It reclaimed her afterwards, not a deep sleep, this time, and its dreams were not dramatic, but fragments of them clung to her as she drifted in and out. Sitting on the lower steps of the building in a summer frock, in the sun, she was holding a creature in her lap, short brownish-grey fur, trembling, not a cat, not a dog, she'd never been keen on dogs. Possibly an aardvark, but she suspected not, she'd have remembered the snout. Holding it safe until the building was ready for it, and could send someone out to collect it.

She is woken at last by Theo, out of breath and in a state. Two minutes, he gasps. No, one, bugger. Appointment downstairs. No time. Just wanted to tell you I saved your bench from a terrible fate, thought you'd be pleased. Explain later.

He hurries over and kisses her on the top of her head. She hands him a biscuit.

I must have known, she says. Look, I saved you this, as a reward.

47.

When she is settled and dozing in the big green chair he walks down to the pond for ten minutes of fresh air, hoping
she will not wake and be at a loss without him. He feels vaguely guilty for going out at all, but he has to get out, because his head hurts and because although it has only been a matter of weeks since she had the accident he is now not used to having another person at home, not this person; it is not like before. She is so fragile and so confused he cannot see how they can possibly avoid it happening all over again, and worse this time, the fall, the white hospital, the distances in her eyes increasing. She had looked out of the taxi window all the way home. He held her hand. Every few minutes she turned to him with questions she could not formulate and a nervous smile that struck his heart. He had told her the names of places as they passed through them.

Standing now by the pond's edge staring down he could swear the horsetails have grown an inch since this morning. Weird things, their perpendicular spears pushing through the water into air; they are just beginning to branch out. Underwater, in that other world, a few of the stems are thick with feeding tadpoles, sticking like iron filings to a thin magnetic rod. Like living chimney-brushes, wriggling totem-poles; tad-poles. He wonders why only two or three stems get chosen for the feast. Crouching down to get a better look his eyes are drawn further in, to the sticklebacks hanging, waiting, flicking away. Little hunters, their skyblue and salmon colours just beginning to intensify. A pale worm thrashes suddenly into view in the mud at the bottom; it looks as if it is being harried, hunted down by a handful of small fish.

A swift dives across him into a cloud of tiny dancing flies. He straightens up, and the headache returns magnified. He looks across the marshy land towards the hills with a new kind of apprehension, at June buttercups too bright and shiny in the heavy air, at dark green rushes somehow loaded with obscure significance. Only without remembering, without noticing in the first place, could anyone ever assume that early summer must be infallibly lovely. We forget days like these. The air is yellowish, thick with the gathering dead.

The last time the three of them had sat down together for a meal must have been nearly ten years ago, her seventieth, she hadn't wanted to go out. They'd all cooked, all at once, different dishes, chopping and frying across each other, drinking wine and beer, dancing round her, teasing, playing the fool. They'd dug out stories for her then, from when they were small, glimpses of games and worlds she was not party to, but whose contexts she remembered far better than they could. Nothing was said about work until after she had gone up to bed, and the two of them sat drinking and talking at the kitchen table. A discussion that got heated. A sheaf of photos thrown down like a gauntlet: figures and faces and buildings. Drunk and frightened and filled with righteous anger, his brother had made him look, and look properly, at every single one.
You don't have to go back
, said Theo.
You've done enough
. And his brother had put his weary drunken head down on the table and said nothing more.

The pictures survived, he thinks, though the photographer had not. They must be in the attic up at the big house somewhere, tucked in a file with all the boxes of stuff. He wonders how Lina got on with the Blaschkas. And then, suddenly stronger and more determined, he turns to walk back up to the cottage, concerned she might have woken, and ready to face the new world indoors. But while his back was turned the evening light has taken sudden hold of swathes of red sorrel lining the path up to the house, and now it flings the colour at him; it is the colour of Myra's hair, and it hurts.

48.

One by one, in a street curving down from near the castle, like lights going out, like teeth falling out, over two or three months, shops have been closing down. They haven't gone like falling dominos, one neatly after the next; just more and more gaps appearing until there are more gaps than teeth. His landlady's shop, the hairdressers, is among them. People just stopped coming, she said. Even the old ladies. Like they'd all died or something. And the students, they used to come; we were reasonably priced, see. I don't know what's happened. It's a mess, it is.

So the rent has gone up, sharply, and Dan is looking everywhere he can think of for a new home. Two adverts in the launderette came to nothing. The property rental people make no attempt to hide their opinion that a toddler is a liability. I can't get rid of him, though, can I? says Dan, trying to be reasonable, and the girl just shrugs and says it doesn't help. Pushing the buggy out into the bright sun he eyes up the distance from the agency to the gaping row. It won't be long, he thinks. It's heading your way. You should have been more sympathetic.

He wavers between the park and the library. He needs the internet to trawl for accommodation, and he needs his fix of stars. But it is a beautiful summery day and Teddy shows no signs of needing a nap, and while he still has his swipe card and free access he feels he should make the most of it. They pass Lina's bench, and he wonders how she is; wonders where she is. Up at the hospital, no doubt. He could always ask her about getting a cleaning job there, when his money runs out, since having a PhD doesn't seem to be a handicap. Or maybe she just didn't tell them. He hopes that she will want to fix up another session of babysitting soon, so that she can look after Teddy and he can go out again on a drop with Theo. But he cannot remember how to get hold of her, there was, she said, some problem with her phone.