Eighteen

DAVID WAS ASLEEP WHEN the nurse touched his shoulder.

He woke, disoriented and dry-mouthed, in the corridor; and realized, as he looked up at her, that he must have been slumped at an awkward angle. His neck cramped; he put his hand to it with a little grunt of pain.

“How are you doing?” the woman asked.

“I’m cold,” he said.

He wondered how it could be true; the hospital was almost too warm. He looked at his watch. It was two A.M. He still had his jacket wrapped around him.

“You want some coffee?”

He smiled at her. “Yes…thank you.”

“You can go in to her,” she said, softly. “You can sit with her.” She was nodding at him encouragingly. They had all seen him, he supposed, after Grace had gone.

He had stood uncertainly for a long time near the nurses’ station, pacing up and down. Then, he had suddenly walked away, gone down in the elevator, got out at the ground floor, and found himself in the reception area that looked out onto the ambulance circle where he and James had first seen Grace. It was deserted, the white lights blazing outside at regular intervals along the sloping drive. He wanted to go home. He wanted to run.

With an effort, he turned away from the doors, and walked down a corridor, and found himself at a junction of several others; in the corner was a vending machine. He put in the little change he had, and took out a can of soda and stood with the ice-cold surface pressed to his face. He saw that, in the wastebasket next to the machine, there was a sheaf of papers and leaflets. The Heritage of New England, read one. Writers and Thinkers, The Concord Circle, The Berkshires, The Hartford Colony. He stared at the brochures, trying to make sense of the names. Above the soda machine was a wall poster. The Isabella Gardner Museum, Tapestry Room open September to May, he read. He stared at the Venetian-style courtyard in the picture. He picked up one of the tourist pamphlets and turned it curiously. Naumkeag…Mission House…Herbarium, daylilies, shrubs, and wildflowers, Berkshire Botanical Garden…

He had dropped the leaflet, and then the can, unopened, into the wastebasket, and walked back to the elevator.

He stood up now. The nurse was still at his side. They walked to the door of the ICU. “You can talk to her, you know,” she murmured.

He looked everywhere but at the bed. Opposite him were the three women who kept watch over the teenage boy, like a trio of ghosts. They caught his glance, but they were only reflections of themselves, fighting with the unreality, nurturing the hope that they were about to wake from the dream. He could see it in their stillness and suspension. As if they were all holding their breath interminably, waiting for the moment that would flex them back into their lives.

He gave them a nod. He knew that feeling. They looked back to the boy.

For the first time, he looked at Anna.

Arc-shaped scar above one eyebrow. And her eyes were half open, mere blanks, filled with mucuslike tears. The nurse stopped to wipe them, and checked the monitors.

Arc-shaped scar over one eyebrow.

Tears.

The nurse came around to his side of the bed. “Sit here,” she urged gently. “It’s all right.”

“But she’s awake.”

“No,” the woman murmured. “But talk. Hold her hand. It’s OK,” she repeated.

He did as he was told; sat down, breath coming in little shallow drafts.

“Why didn’t you talk to her?” Sara had asked, eleven years ago.

“I did,” he had replied. “I tried.”

“Anna,” he said now.

Now Sara is following him along New Building, under the carved hyena, panther, griffin, and Anger. The stone carved figure of Anger.

“Anna,” he said. “Anna.” He touched the back of her hand with his fingertip. “Anna, it’s David.”

He had met Sara at the Oxford station.

It was six months after their mother had died. She had come for a visit.

She got down out of the train and threw herself into his arms. “I’m so excited,” she said. It was a bright afternoon. He had arranged with Anna that Sara could stay with her in her room. The blackthorn was in bloom in the parks; the cherries were just beginning to show. Somehow he had equated this, in his head, with a change in Anna’s attitude. All the misunderstandings of the previous few weeks would blow over. The cold would be a memory. But all the time, as he had waited on the platform for Sara’s train to arrive, the gnawing unease in the pit of his stomach had grown. Anna had promised that she would meet him at twelve-fifteen.

It got to be twelve-thirty. The train was late. So was Anna.

The train came.

Anna did not.

After dropping him from her bear hug, Sara had immediately started to rifle through her shoulder bag, all the while grinning up at him. “Here,” she said, pushing a packet into his grasp. “Don’t say anything, it wasn’t my choice. He told me to bring them. All the way! I ask you! But you know what he’s like.”

David had peered down into the brown paper bag. It was full of apples; last year’s apples, carefully preserved by his father over that winter; russets, wrinkled and sweet-smelling.

He’d smiled sadly. His father never wrote a letter. The gift of the apples was the best he could do; a greeting from the depths of his slow preoccupations.

“Where’s Anna?” Sara asked.

“I don’t know,” he told her.

“Is she going to meet us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I got it wrong.”

He’d walked her along Broad. “This is the Sheldonian,” he told her. “Old Bodleian Library. Catte Street…”

“Stop running,” she begged. “Stop the guided tour. I can’t hear what you’re on about.”

“I’m not running, I’m walking fast.”

“You can have my bag then, it’s killing me.”

As they stopped and she handed the bag over, she suddenly saw the expression on his face. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing. It’s a misunderstanding.”

It was a Saturday. Crowds filled the streets. Still, he felt totally removed from the people around them. He and Sara had strayed into some other reality. He was not here, and Sara was not here. As he took the bag, he thought of them in years past, getting off the same school bus at the bottom of the hill in the village, he taking Sara’s bag then, a smaller Sara running ahead of him along the lane, or careering from side to side on her bike, or dancing in circles with the dog from the house on the corner, the spaniel. Years collapsed in on themselves. Holding Sara’s hand as she leaned out over the stream; finding her alone in the orchard at the bottom of the wood, cross-legged under an apple tree, obliviously chewing on a piece of grass.

“Don’t tell me nothing’s wrong,” Sara was saying. “Have you had an argument with Anna?”

He didn’t want to walk on. He clung, for a few seconds, to the long-ago image of Sara in his head.

“David,” Sara had urged, pulling on his sleeve.

“No,” he told her. “No argument.”

“A fight?”

“Of course we bloody haven’t.”

They’d got to the High, and Roxburgh’s was facing them. As they crossed the street toward it, he had a sudden piercing conviction that Anna was gone. He almost tripped over the curb in a blind panic.

“Wait,” Sara begged. “Wait.”

They reached Anna’s rooms. “Stay here,” he told her, leaving her at the foot of the stairs. His heart was pounding by now. It seemed to be right in his throat, choking him.

Two steps at a time, he reached Anna’s landing. A girl was walking along it, another American girl, and he caught her by the arm. It was someone that he had once or twice seen Anna talking to. “Is Anna here?” he asked.

She had shrugged, disengaging her arm with a frown.

“Anna Russell,” he said.

“How would I know?”

He went to the door, and knocked. There was no answer. He tried it. Locked. “Anna,” he shouted, face pressed to the door.

The next door along opened. This girl he thought he knew. She was from New York. An Irish name. Caitlin. Or Colleen…

“David?” she asked.

“Have you seen Anna?” he said.

“Are you David?” she asked, evidently not remembering him.

“Why?” he said.

The girl rolled her eyes. “Look, what’s your name?”

“David Mortimer,” he told her.

“Just a minute,” she said.

She went into her room, and came out again, holding an envelope. It had his name written on the front.

“She left you this,” the girl said.

He stared at the envelope, then back at her. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“Listen,” she said, “I don’t know anything, believe me.” He tore it open.

David,

I’ve got to go home. I’m sorry. I will write to you.

Anna

He stared at the girl in the doorway.

“When did she give you this?”

“This morning.”

“When this morning?”

“Early. Before seven.”

Sara was coming up the stairs, bumping her bag against her leg. He glanced at her once, then back at the girl.

“Did she say where she was going?” he asked.

“No.”

“She must have done!”

“She said nothing to me. The first I know, she’s giving me that.” And she nodded at the paper in his hand.

“Was she going home?”

“I don’t know,” the girl answered. “What does the letter say?”

He took a step toward her, the letter in his fist, his hands shaking, the paper fluttering. “But she must have said something to you,” he said. “She must have said she was getting a train, or going to a hotel, or visiting somewhere…”

The girl stepped back defensively. “There’s no use getting angry with me,” she retorted.

Sara was at his shoulder. “What is it?” she asked.

“I’m not getting angry,” David said, “I just want to know where she is.”

Sara was trying to take the letter from his grasp.

“How am I supposed to know?” the girl snapped. “You’re the one with the letter.”

“But she must have said something to you!”

“Look,” the girl replied, “I know nothing about it, OK? All I know is she knocks at the door at the crack of dawn, and she gives me this.” And she indicated the letter with a flourish of her hand.

“David,” Sara said. “Come downstairs.”

“I’m just asking a simple question,” he said. “She lives next door to her, she lives next door…”

“I know,” Sara said. She was pulling on his shoulder, trying to turn him around.

“It’s a simple question…”

“Come downstairs,” Sara said. She pushed and pulled him along the corridor. They went down the stone steps, back to the ground floor. Sara took the letter. She read it, then folded it silently, and put it in her pocket.

“Sit down,” she said.

“No.”

“Walk, then,” she cajoled. “Come on. Walk.”

They went out, and along the street, and over the bridge.

“We’ll get a cup of tea,” Sara said. “Where is a good place? Show me.”

They sat somewhere. Not Roxburgh’s.

For a long time he stared down at the cup of tea, then, with a sudden thought, looked up at his sister.

“Which airport would a flight to Boston go from?” he asked her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Because you’re not following her.”

“Is it Gatwick?”

She held his hand. “David,” she said, “it’s half past one in the afternoon now. She left at seven.”

“It won’t have gone yet,” he said.

“Even if that were true now,” she pointed out to him, “it wouldn’t be by the time you got to the airport. It would take you hours by train. Even by car it would take too long.” She gripped his fingers tightly. “It can’t be done,” she whispered softly. “She’s gone.”

“It’s a mistake,” he said.

“Mistake?”

“She didn’t understand.”

Sara frowned. “Understand what?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he said. “We could wait. She could have gone back at the end of the year. China doesn’t matter. I could have come to Boston. You could work that out, couldn’t you?”

She shifted her chair closer to him. “What’s all this about?” she said.

“I wanted to be with her,” he said. “After her course finished here.”

Sara closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, David.”

“What?” he said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“You’ve only known each other a few weeks!”

“Five months,” he said. “We’ve known each other five months.”

“Even so.”

He stared at her. “It wasn’t a joke,” he said.

“I know.”

“Then what the hell are you smiling about?”

She shook her head. “It’s you,” she said. “Just obliviously plowing ahead with your pet scheme.”

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Look,” she replied, “what did you ask Anna to do?”

“Just be together. Maybe go to China.”

“China?” Sara repeated. “And what did she say?”

“She…” He stopped.

“You fenced her in,” she told him.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“So she said yes?” Sara asked. “She agreed?”

“Not exactly,” he told her. “She didn’t say no.”

“But…”

“She asked me not to keep talking about it, so I didn’t. I stopped.”

“OK,” Sara said. “So then what?”

He shrugged. “We talked about what we would do at the end of this year,” he said.

“And what’s all this about China?”

He looked away from her, back to the nearly empty cup. “It’s a book,” he said. “I wanted to write a book.”

“About what, exactly?”

“Someone who went there. A botanist. A plant collector.” She was watching him intently. “It was just an idea,” he muttered.

“And you suggested that Anna go with you?”

“Of course.”

“After you finished at Oxford.”

“Yes.”

“And she finished at Harvard.”

“Yes. Kind of.”

“And she said…?”

He looked away, at the people around them. Families. Other students. Tourists.

“David,” Sara prompted. “What did she say to you about this trip?”

“She didn’t want to go,” he murmured.

Sara sat back in her seat. She looked at him with pity; glancing up from the table, he caught her expression.

“Everything was all right,” he said. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

Sara said nothing for some time. She drank the last of her tea, and then gazed out of the window. Eventually, she looked back at him, and gave him a small smile. “You aren’t Dad,” she said, finally. “But you can get detached—off in your own little world. That’s when you remind me of him.”

He shook his head, mouth clamped shut in a defensive grimace.

Sara began to talk, almost as if to herself, in a musing voice. “Have you any idea what it’s been like at home, since Mum died?” she said. “I can talk to Dad, and he doesn’t listen. He’s somewhere else in his head. He’s thinking about some job he’s got organized. Do you know what it was last week, do you know what the sole topic of conversation was?” She shook her head, half smiling, half grimacing. “Somebody’s bloody lawn mower! He’s repairing a lawn mower, and he was out in the garden shed every night last week. And I can’t get two words out of him, except to talk about this bloody mower, and do you know what?” she demanded, leaning now on the table, and pointing at him. “Even if I could, even if I could make him see what I was talking about, even if he tried to be interested, it would all be for nothing.”

“Why?” David asked.

“Because he doesn’t understand,” she replied. “If I get upset about anything, he stares at me as if I’ve grown another head. I feel like I’m living alone.”

David looked down. “Anna wasn’t alone,” he muttered.

Sara sighed. “And I suppose you talked and talked at her about this book,” she said, “when you already guessed she was feeling something else?” She put her hand over his. “Am I close?” she murmured.

David pushed his cup away, and stared at the tabletop.

Later that week, after Sara had gone, he went to Magdalen Chapel.

Near the door was a blue notice board, where visitors pinned little pieces of paper. They wrote down names and prayers. Hopes and memorials.

He had found himself staring at the messages, while in the screened-off chapel beyond, a single voice read and reread a passage from the New Testament, practicing for the service the next day.

He had to lean down to read the messages in the gloom, with only the faint ochre lights above the board, and the blue reflection from the Nativity Window.

After a while, he had written his own message, and pinned it to the board.

It was just Anna’s name.

He had gone back week after week, to make sure that it was still there.