Read Long Lies the Shadow Online
Authors: Gerda Pearce
Long Lies the Shadow (7 page)
The door opens slowly, pushing against delivered mail. Michael picks up the pile of post, puts it on the table in the hall. Gin moves past him, shaking the rain off her mac. She hangs it on the rail, and fluffs raindrops out of her hair. It has grown long in the last month, notices Michael, hanging his own coat next to hers. She files through the assorted envelopes.
“Michael, there’s one here for you.”
“For me?” His voice comes out thin with surprise.
The stamp is Danish. Gin hands it to him without meeting his eyes, and walks past him into the kitchen. It can only be from his wife. They both know this.
He stands in the hall, turning the envelope over in his hands for a while. Then he walks slowly to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. Gin turns on the gas, and flicks the switch to ignite the blue flame. She reaches for the kettle and turns to look at him. He shifts his gaze past her to the window. Rain courses down the clear length of it, distorting the view of the garden beyond into a surrealist blur. Gin turns back to the stove, puts the kettle over the flame.
“What does she say?” she asks, her back to him.
He has been here only a month but he has started to feel as if he might stay forever. Kristina and Denmark feel like a part of some nagging leftover dream. Michael leans against the doorjamb, arms folded. Gin turns around to face him again.
He looks away from her, to the blur of roses outside, the apricot yellow, pinks, and ruby that seep across the kitchen window. Then
his eyes meet hers squarely. “I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.” He cannot tell her he does not intend to; he can barely admit it to himself.
She gives him a dark look.
Michael smiles wearily at her. “I know you don’t like her.”
She looks at him sharply. “I didn’t mean –,” but her sentence dies unfinished.
He knows he is right; she had never liked Kristina. She finds it hard to lie to him, he realises. Politeness has never had a place between them. “It’s all right, Gin,” he says, “she never liked you either.”
Gin does not react. He is slightly bemused by his own confession of it. Kristina, jealous of everyone he knew, but especially Gin. With no cause, he reflects. Checks himself; least cause, then. His two affairs had been remarkable only for their endings. Recrimination, regret, reconciliation. But Kristina’s insecurities, her constant need, had meant the geographical distance between him and Gin had hardened into an emotional one. Banished finally by that phone call. Michael moves across the kitchen, the unopened letter crinkles in his pocket. He wants to go to her, hug her and apologise, but instead he sits heavily at the table. He looks at Gin, staring ahead into space, notices the lines around her eyes. We have grown old, he thinks, without noticing. Waiting for life to take on meaning or purpose. We, marking time. And time, marking us.
He rubs his eyes, looks up at her. The kettle whistles impatiently and she turns it off, opens the cupboard and takes down two mugs.
“You know, I never liked Simon either,” he says suddenly.
Gin turns to stare at him. Her mouth opens but no words form. She brings a hand up to her mouth, as if astonished at her own lack of speech.
“Neither did Gabe,” he continues, relentless now. He does not know why he feels the need to shock her. Perhaps it is her listlessness, her disassociation that ignites a hard, sudden flash of anger in him.
He wants to shake her out of her disinterest, bring her back to life. To the Gin he once knew. Rarely has he glimpsed the Gin he knows, the healthy tomboy he grew up with, the pretty teenager, the attractive woman with a wide smile, emotive blue eyes, and a ready laugh.
She seems to him a sepia remnant of herself. She has said nothing, is still standing there, eyes fixed, her fingers still raised to her impotent lips.
He has no right to bring up Gabe in this manner, thinks Michael, or Gabe’s feelings about Simon. Both men are dead, and there can be no resolution for her. Again, he wants to hold her, say he is sorry, sit her down, make her tea, comfort her. He wants to push back the too-long hair, push away the hand still held to her mouth.
Now he is angry with himself for hurting her. It is not fair on her. She is pregnant, and has lost yet another person whom she loved. His hand slams on the table, harder than he meant. She makes a small sound and jumps. Michael is immediately contrite, the violent expression contrary to his nature. He stands and walks over to her, but she flinches away from him.
“I’m sorry, Gin,” he says sincerely. He runs his hand through his short hair, rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry,” he says again, his hands falling to his sides.
Gin nods mutely, but he knows she was alarmed by his outburst and confused at his confession. On some level, he feels glad her state of stasis has been assaulted. Gin turns back, busies herself with making tea. She hands him his mug. As she does so, the sleeve on her arm rides up.
“Your arm’s healed nicely,” notes Michael, trying to change the stilted atmosphere that has formed between them. He leans against the sideboard.
Gin’s right hand reaches involuntarily to touch her left arm, where the burn has smoothed the skin unnaturally. She nods again, a brief movement of her head.
Michael wants to ask her if she has remembered more about the accident, but he is wary now. He wants to ask her also about her nightmares. He has heard her cry out during the night and thought to go to her room to wake her, but somehow he has desisted, afraid it might distress her further.
How happy she had made him when he’d first heard her voice on the phone those few months ago, soon to be replaced by worry. And fear, he realises. Gin seems beyond his reach at times, and he cannot fail to think of Gabe, and the course her brother chose to take. He shudders at the thought. Gabe’s death had brought him here initially, to England, Gabe’s death the catalyst for his desertion of his homeland; he could not contemplate army service after what had happened to his best friend. They had been like brothers. He finds himself thinking yet again about Gabe’s final months. Those months on the run, hiding from the Army, from the military police, surviving where and how they would never really now know.
The crack of the farmhouse’s splintering door. The sound of heavy boots racing up the stairs. Shouted commands in Afrikaans. Viv’s scream brought Michael running, half-dressed, onto the landing between their rooms. Viv was being hauled out of her room, a soldier pulling her by the arm, slinging her towards the stairs.
Gin touches his hand, forgiveness implicit in the gesture. He looks at her gratefully. She leans into him and hugs him. His arms reach around her fiercely, although he is mindful of the bump of her belly. She is not totally lost to him, he thinks. She cannot be.
“At least you look pregnant now,” he says, when he eventually lets go of her.
She smiles wanly at him. Her health, he thinks, has improved somewhat, and her skin has lost the sallow look he had noted on his arrival.
“I have to have another scan,” she says quietly. “It – they said the baby was a bit small. Maybe… maybe not growing properly.”
Oh, Christ, he thinks. He worries what it will do to her if she loses this baby. On some level he thinks she has barely acknowledged the pregnancy. When he arrived, he had been appalled by her lack of preparation for it. He forced her to go shopping, to buy a cot, clothes, nappies. But he knows her reluctance is also due to fear. A fear of losing Simon’s child again.
“Mikey,” she says, when they are seated with their tea at the high wooden table in the centre of the kitchen, and then pauses pensively.
He feels his shoulders tense involuntarily, waiting for her to ask why he and Gabe had disliked Simon.
Instead she asks, “What happened that Easter?”
“What do you mean?” The question throws him.
She takes a gingerly sip from her mug. “Was something wrong?”
His brow furrows. “Wrong?”
She exhales, a long breath, blowing at the steam off her tea. “Well, just, I don’t know… it seemed,” again she pauses, as if searching for the right phrase. “It seemed as if there was something wrong between you and Gabe.”
Michael is quiet, remembering.
Gabe shouted at him. “What’s it to you, Michael? Where I go, who I see?” Turned on his heel. “Or is Hannah your business too? Like Viv?” Strode out the farmhouse. “Stop trying to control me, Michael.” The engine ignited, wheels spinning dust. “Fuck you, Michael.”
He has never forgotten. It had been their last, their only, argument.
“I thought there was some tension between the two of you, some anger even.” Her gaze goes past him as she focuses on some memory of her own. Then she looks at him, blue eyes direct. “Was it something to do with Viv?”
“Viv?” Her astuteness astounds him. “No, well, yes. There was some stuff with Viv. But not then, not that Easter.” He stops. “That Easter was more about Hannah.”
“Hannah?” Gin’s tone is shrill.
Michael takes a long sip of his own tea. It sears the roof of his mouth. He breathes in deeply, deciding.
And then he tells her.
“Something
was
wrong,” he admits. He feels fractionally guilty. This will be Hannah’s story also. But Hannah is across the other side of the world now, and out of their lives.
Hannah stood at the university bookstore window on High Street. Her bag was slung forlornly at her feet. Michael’s first impulse was to call to her, but something in her stance stopped him. He checked himself. Was it Hannah? The young woman’s long hair draped forward, partially obscuring her face. And she looked thinner than Hannah. He stood for a moment unsure, watching her. She continued to stare into the stacked display of books. He found this odd. Only boring tomes on science and statistics lined the window. Then she raised a hand to her face, made as if to wipe at her eyes. Was she crying? His instinct was to move forward, comfort her. But then, he had not seen Hannah for over a year. Not since school had ended. Not since Hannah had gone to Israel. Would she want him to interfere with her obvious sadness? And if it weren’t Hannah, what stranger would want him intruding, offering solace? So he stood back, immobile with indecision. Then the young woman sniffed and tucked a thick rope of hair behind one ear. Hannah. Unmistakeably Hannah.
Michael moved forward, closing the short distance between them. He called her name softly, not wanting to startle her. But she jumped nonetheless, a hand went to her heart, her back straightening, stiffening, away from him. But a smile quickly formed and he felt himself heartened by this. He moved closer, stood in front of her. Her hand moved
from her chest to his. He liked the gesture; it was easy, intimate. He reached around to hug her. But she did not return the embrace, instead left her hand on his chest, between them. No longer easy, intimate. It was to hold him at bay, rather. But then her smile forced itself brighter. More the Hannah of old. He asked her if she was feeling okay. She nodded, but there passed between them a tacit acknowledgement. That he had seen her weeping. That he knew.
“So we went to the coffee shop across the road,” he says to Gin, “you remember – Daisy’s?”
Gin nods. He knows she remembers. The bookshop, Daisy’s, both were near where she and Simon had lived. Even in this telling he cannot spare her more pain, he thinks. We are all connected, our lives spun together like a web.
Hannah held her mug tightly. Unusually for her, her nails were short and unpainted, her fingers bare except for two simple rings, one of them made of three intertwined bands, each a different colour. Michael found the sounds of the café at first loud and intrusive. But after a while, after they had ordered a pot of Daisy’s Kenyan coffee, after it had arrived with cheerful floral mugs and steaming milk, after they had sat facing each other over the table in the back corner, he found the noise a comfort. Something to absorb their silence, and something, he thought, for by then he had no doubt, if she was ever going to speak, something to absorb the starkness of her words.
“Daisy’s,” says Gin suddenly.
She hugs her mug close to her, much as Hannah had done that day. He is struck afresh by how alike Gin and Hannah have always been in some respect. Gin fairer, taller. Hannah darker, more like Gabe. But then some had thought Hannah was Gabe’s twin instead of Gin, he remembers. Same dark hair, same blue eyes. Same bright
smile, same happy laugh. But it is Gin, he thinks, who shared Gabe’s intensity of spirit, his seriousness of soul.
“Why was Hannah so unhappy, Michael?” asks Gin, bringing him back to the cool kitchen.
Despite the grey pall of rain, it is still light. The long Northern summers still strike him as oddly as the curt dark days of winter’s chill. There is a sound of distant traffic that to him sounds like the sea. It is a pleasant house, he thinks. A nice house to live, to raise a child. Gin can be happy here. He laces his fingers with hers over the tabletop and looks at her. Her face is thinned with sorrow, and he regrets the way the conversation has turned.
“I’ll never understand why she cut you all off,” says Gin slowly. “Especially Gabe. Me, I understand.” She stutters here, and pauses.
“You? Why you?” he asks, incredulous. But of course he has known Hannah’s reasons all these years. Gin has had no recourse but to make up her own.
Gin takes her hands from his, lifts her mug and swallows hard. She puts it down unevenly, and the liquid slops inside, but does not spill. “Because of Simon,” she says, her voice hoarse. It is as if it hurts her throat to say his name aloud. She coughs, and says, more clearly. “Hannah always disapproved.”
“Because Simon was her cousin?”
She looks at him oddly, frowning slightly as if he is being obtuse. “No…” she starts, but then she stops as if to think. “Well, maybe. I suppose that could have made it worse for her.”
“Made what worse?”
“Because he was Jewish and I wasn’t. We only spoke about it once, when I asked why she never came to see us.”
“What did she say?”
Gin sighs, traces the pattern on her mug with her finger. “Said it was wrong. Said it wouldn’t last.”
She looks up at him. He cannot make out the emotion in her
eyes, but their colour has clouded from a clear cerulean to a hue so dark it is almost indigo.
She smiles, a lop-sided grimace with no humour. “Well, she was right, wasn’t she?”
He was right about Hannah’s words. At first, they came haltingly, staccato-like. Each word a stab, a cut into the air. Michael sipped his coffee and listened. Hannah started by asking him if he remembered the farewell dance of their final school year. He could hardly have forgotten, but he nodded yes. For a moment her look was one of innocent pleasure. Then came a wretchedness to her gaze. When she asked about Gabe, how he was. Michael contemplated telling her the truth. How Gabe had rang her and left messages as soon as he had heard she was back. Time after time, and how her continued silence had hurt him. He felt he should tell her how Gabe drank too much, and smoked too much, and how he went to every party, coming home each time with a different girl. He thought he ought to tell her Gabe’s heart was shattered, broken. And by her. Instead, Michael lied and told Hannah Gabe was fine. A long lock fell in front of her face again. Then she asked him if he knew why she’d gone to Israel. The question took him by surprise. In truth, he had never questioned it. He stumbled over an inadequate answer. Experience, he said. To meet with family, he supposed. To study. A cultural break, even. Her laugh was short and mirthless.
Michael stops.
Gin looks at him questioningly. “Well? Was it none of those things?” she prompts.
“Did you know she didn’t go straight to Israel?” asks Michael.
Her look is quizzical. “No. Why? Where did she go?”
He reaches for his mug, drains the last of his tepid drink. Then he puts the mug down and looks at her. “Gin, Hannah came to England before she went to Israel. And she came to England to have an abortion.”