East Fortune (5 page)

‘I hope so too.'

Jack stayed on in the pub and went over everything they had said. He tried to think how he might have expressed himself better or encouraged Krystyna to stay longer. Perhaps she had left so abruptly because she was upset and she did not want to show him.

He walked back to his office, past the skateboarders in George Square and the chaplaincy centre that offered consolation to ‘all faiths and none'. It was a student world of kebab shops and cafés (
Haggis samosas are back
!), of second-hand bookshops, bookmakers and poundsavers. Jack could not imagine what Krystyna made of it all or how she could ever feel at ease in such a city.

He gathered up the exam papers he had to mark and took the bus home, out through the south of Edinburgh, following the road he had taken the night Sandy had died. The roadside hedges were thickening in the warm rain; spindle and blackthorn, blackberry and crab apple, woodland ghosts with yellow rapeseed behind. The bluebells were dying now.

He could see the noticeboards out of the window:
Two miles, thirteen fatalities in three years. One mile, six fatalities.
Jack wanted someone to stop, to recognise what had happened to him. It could be a stranger, anyone who would allow him to feel less solitary.

He walked back from the bus stop past the willow scrub by the river, the banks deteriorating, vegetation halting the flow. It looked clogged and stagnant.

That night he listened to the sea rise and fall in the distance. He thought how long it might take Krystyna to recover and how selfish love could be when removed abruptly and without warning; the punishment involved.

He could not stop thinking about her: the sound of loss in her voice, the distance between them as she spoke. He looked out into the garden to see the first of the wisteria coming into bloom, the promise of summer.

Krystyna was twenty-seven. She had come to Edinburgh to earn money, to improve her English, and to be with her friend Eva who was working as a dental technician. They lived in a two-bedroom flat on a main road above a Thai restaurant.

When she had earned enough money Krystyna planned to go back to university, to do an MA or an MPhil. She wanted to study what it had been like to leave her country in the past. She would research the experience of Polish émigrés who had come to live in Scotland during the Second World War; Jews leaving the ghettos, the airmen of 309 Squadron, the students at the Polish Medical School; all those who had been forced to reinvent themselves while still retaining a sense of their original nationality. It was a story of blood and belonging.

Perhaps this was the reason she had been so willing to see Jack. Because he worked at the university she hoped that he might help her.

She earned most of her money as a contract cleaner, driving round Edinburgh with her friend Myra, letting herself in to houses in Merchiston and Morningside, taking it in turns to do the wet work and the dry work, sometimes annoyed at the washing up left in the kitchen, the piles of ironing and the extensive bottles left over from parties: all the careless remains of wealth. So much money seemed to have been spent on so much
stuff.

Sometimes she and Myra would laugh at the possessions that littered houses which were already too full; at model railways, doll's
houses, and dying bonsai trees; at plasma television screens and gym equipment that showed no sign of ever being used.

Each time they drove out on their cleaning run Krystyna thought of Sandy. She looked at the cars and tried to think how he had decided to step out into traffic. Jack said that he had appeared calm, determined. Krystyna could not remember Sandy ever being like that.

At night she dreamed of standing in the road instead of him, the car coming towards her. She shuddered at the impact, the falling away. She could almost feel herself losing consciousness. At other times she would be driving the car itself, heading towards Sandy, deliberately killing him, unable to do anything to stop it.

They had been with each other for just over a year. Krystyna had been attracted to Sandy's curiosity, his enthusiasm for all that was new. He wasn't going to be tied down to a single job or career path. He would earn money as a sous-chef or he would work for a polling company, saving enough for the next round of travel to a place where he could live cheaply, Sri Lanka or Taiwan, spending six months working and then giving it all up to see what happened.

He would work and talk through the night, hardly sleeping until the inevitable collapse would come and he would take to his bed for days, even weeks, lying in the darkness, hardly eating, preparing himself for the next manic assault on life.

He kept saying that he only wanted to be with Krystyna, and after a while neither of them appeared to be spending any time with anyone else.

‘Where are you going?' he would say. ‘Why do you need to see Fergus? Why are you having a drink with Magda? Why can't we just have a night in?'

‘We always have nights in,' Krystyna said. ‘It is all we do.'

‘And what's wrong with that?'

When she questioned him his tone became threatening. Didn't she understand that they had something more valuable than friendship? It was absurd to spend time with other people when they could be with each other.

He phoned her every day and then all the time. Krystyna began
to dread seeing him. She tried to be as gentle as she could but the kinder she was the greater advantage he took.

Krystyna suggested he should see a doctor.

‘I'm fine. I'm in love. That's all. There's nothing wrong with me.'

‘But, Sandy…'

‘What's wrong? Isn't this perfect?'

‘No, Sandy, it is not…'

‘Don't you like it? What more can I do? I love you. I want to be with you. What's wrong with that?'

‘It is too much.'

‘How can love be too much?'

‘I do not know.'

‘You don't like it?'

‘Sometimes I do not know if I can breathe. Sometimes I think I have to get away from this. You cannot see that?'

Sandy was pouring sugar into his coffee. He held the spoon in midair, letting the white grains fall. The rest of the room was still. Nothing seemed to be moving except for the falling sugar. He kept putting more and more into his cup.

‘Stop it,' Krystyna said. ‘Enough. You do not need to do this.'

‘I can do what I want.'

The coffee and the sugar began to spill into the saucer.

‘I think we should stop,' Krystyna said.

‘You don't mean it,' Sandy replied.

‘I do. I am sorry.'

‘My life is nothing without you.'

‘That is not true.'

‘How do you know what I feel? You don't know the effect you have on people.'

‘You exaggerate.'

‘All I want is you.'

Krystyna had taken such care to avoid a confrontation.

‘It isn't right,' she said. ‘I can't be everything you need all of the time. In the end you'll be disappointed. I won't be able to live up to what you want. I am not right.'

‘But what if I think you are?'

‘I can see you think that,' Krystyna said, ‘but you have to believe me. This is not good for either of us.'

‘I think you're wrong,' Sandy said.

‘I am sure you do. But what you think does not make it right.'

‘Doesn't it?'

‘No, it does not.'

‘I can't believe you're saying this.'

‘I am sorry.'

‘You'll miss me,' he said.

‘I know.'

‘And you'll regret it.'

‘Yes, Sandy, I know I will.'

He picked up a knife from the block by the sink and stabbed it into the breadboard.

‘And if you don't I'll make you regret it.'

‘Don't…'

He walked out, down the stairs and into the street. Krystyna thought about opening the window and calling down, already worried, telling him to come back, but she could not stand it any more.

That had been three weeks ago.

Now, after his death, his
suicide,
Krystyna was determined not to take all the blame. His death even made her angry and she took out her frustration on all the objects that confronted her: kitchen sinks, taps, strainers and stainless-steel drainers. She wiped down hobs and oven doors, marble worktops and kitchen tables. She concentrated her aggression on white surfaces and dark floors, on stairs and banisters, rubbing away the detritus of privileged lives until her hands hurt.

Sometimes she even said his name as she polished,
Alexander Jamie Crawford,
whispering the words, ‘I hate you, I hate you.'

‘Slow down,' Myra said. ‘You'll exhaust yourself.'

‘It is all right.'

‘There'll be nothing left to clean.'

The suicide was melodramatic selfishness, Krystyna decided; ingratitude for all the time they had been together. She had shown such patience and had been rewarded with death and guilt.

She had to find more work. In fact she wanted to do nothing but
work. She would work so hard that perhaps she never needed to think again.

She became depressed and feverish. She was sick. Then she missed her period.

She began to panic.
Cholera jasna.

She couldn't be pregnant. She just couldn't.

She decided to say nothing even though she kept vomiting in the mornings and taking to her bed as soon as she came home from work. Eva asked if she was all right and suggested that they went away together to forget about all that had happened. They could even go back to Poland.

Krystyna thought of her friends and the abortions they had had. It was why she had always been so careful. She couldn't ever see herself going through with such a thing and she was angry with herself and with Sandy all over again. It must have been the last time they had slept together, when she had just stopped taking the pill and had only agreed out of tiredness and nostalgia. How stupid could she have been? Why couldn't it have happened when they were happy and free, when they had experienced all the early stages of discovering each other, when trust was absolute and everything had been an adventure?

She checked for the symptoms of pregnancy on the Internet, knowing that she had virtually all of them, and picked up a test in the chemist. She looked at the instructions on the back of the packet and saw that she wouldn't have to wait more than a minute for an accurate result. Anyway she already knew. She bloody knew.

How could Sandy have done this to her? How could she have let it happen?

She drank down a full glass of water. Then she looked in the kitchen for a container. There was a measuring jug, the glass bowl they used for beating eggs and the china basin for the apple cakes they cooked to remind them of home.

Krystyna wished her mother was still alive. She wouldn't tell her father or her brothers.
O mój Bo
e.

None of the containers were appropriate or hygienic. For a moment she wanted to smash them on the floor.
Skurczybyk.

She opted for the transparency of the glass. She carried the bowl into the bathroom and set it down at the foot of the chair. Then she went into the bedroom and took off her trainers, her socks, her jeans and her pants.

She returned to the bathroom and sat down on the chair. She read the instructions again:

1. Remove the test from the airtight package.

2. Holding the strip vertically, carefully dip it into the specimen. Do not immerse the strip past the max line.

3. Remove the strip after four to five seconds and lay the strip flat on a clean, dry, non-absorbent surface.

She had forgotten to prepare the surface. She thought of kitchen towelling but realised that would confuse the test paper. She brought a white side plate back from the kitchen and sat down once more.

Gówno.

She picked up the bowl and peed into it. Her urine was the colour of straw. She did not know if that was good or bad or whether it mattered.

She pulled out the test strip from the packet and lowered it into the bowl. She wondered if her thoughts could have any effect on the outcome. Could she will the colour bands not to appear?

And if they did not appear would she be relieved or disappointed?

The test result took as long as Sandy must have taken to die. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now. Not that she would have let him.

She put the strip on the plate, poured the bowl into the toilet, and rinsed it in the sink. Then she dressed and washed her hands, drying them on a towel that was still damp from Eva's morning bath. It never did dry properly. That was another thing that annoyed her.

What am I doing here? Krystyna thought. Why?

She stood looking at the piece of paper. The control and the test lines had both begun to colour the pale pink of baby clothes. ‘
Cholera jasna,'
she said.

She walked back into her bedroom and lay down on the bed.