The Reading Group Part 24

Later, when there was time, she asked herself, why were they up on the roof? How did they get up there? What made him fall? But it didn't matter then and it never would.

She didn't want to go to him she was frightened. But her legs ran towards him. She knew at once that he was unconscious. Her voice shouted, louder than George and William. Bullets of instruction. The girls were crowding round. Chloe was panicking. Martha cried along with her. 'Josh. Josh. Josh.' Harriet couldn't think.

'Will, George, take the girls inside. Now.'

There was no blood. His limbs weren't twisted unnaturally. She had the thought she'd heard a hundred times in bad films and soap operas: he looked like he was asleep. Peaceful. If there had been blood, she'd have had something to do. If he'd been awake, moaning with pain, she'd have had something to do. She'd have walked into a burning building to pull him out, she'd have held him while a doctor st.i.tched him. She'd have done anything anyone could have asked of her. It was already too late to do the one thing she should have done: keep him safe, keep him off the roof. Now she couldn't do anything.

He was breathing. At least, she thought he was. She didn't want to push his head back and pinch his nose and push his chest in what she thought might be the right place and the right rhythm. She was afraid that if she touched him she might do the wrong thing. She wanted to pick him up, carry him inside. But she was afraid to do that, too.

She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life, or ever imagined being. The fear felt like spilt blood seeping from the pit of her stomach into every part of her dark red, making everything dark. She couldn't say anything, beyond barking instructions at the kids, but inside her head was a Tower of Babel and all the voices were her own. Wake up, Joshie. Wake up for me. Please don't let him die. Why wasn't he wearing his helmet? I told him he always had to. You weren't watching him. What the h.e.l.l was he doing on the roof? Where's the ambulance? I want Tim. There isn't a mark on him. I want Tim. Please please please please.

The ambulance took eight minutes. Nicole took nine. It felt like hours. She wasn't wearing any makeup. Harriet couldn't remember when she'd last seen her without any. She'd come, as Harriet had known she would. The ambulance had parked in the driveway, blocking her entry, so she pulled up outside and ran towards the house. George and William tore to her from the front step, with Martha and Chloe stumbling behind. She took the four of them into a tight, awkward embrace, then put them down again, on the step, and turned to look for Harriet.

'What's happened?'

'The boys they were on the roof, I don't know why. Josh fell off. He's. .h.i.t his head, Oh, Nic he's unconscious.' She was sitting back from him now, on her heels, with her arms round herself, rocking a little backwards and forwards. Nicole sat beside her on the ground, and Harriet leant on her shoulder. Josh was obscured by the paramedics, talking calmly to each other, to him, and to her, asking how it had happened, how long ago. They spoke to George and William, trying to establish whether he had been unconscious before he fell, or awake at all since. The boys, looking nervously from Nicole to Harriet to Josh, answered as best they could. He'd been fine on the roof, they said. Then he'd just slipped. He hadn't woken up at all.

William asked the question that Harriet couldn't: 'Is he going to be okay?' His childlike faith in the uniform and the ambulance made his face hopeful. Harriet's certainties had all deserted her.

The paramedic answered William's question in Harriet and Nicole's direction. 'We need to get him to hospital. They'll find out why he's unconscious. He's breathing, though, and stable, so try not to worry. We're just going to put him on a backboard, in case he has other injuries. It's a precaution with a fall like this.'

Nicole's mobile started to ring. She stood up and moved out of the paramedics' way before she answered it. 'h.e.l.lo? Tim?... Yes, I'm with them now... I don't know. He's unconscious. He's had a bad fall... Yes, they're here too. They're just putting him in the ambulance... Yes. Yes. Course I will. You go straight there... Yes. Hold on, I'll put her on.' She held out the phone towards Harriet. 'He's just getting on a train. He wants to talk to you.'

Harriet took the phone and blurted her confession. 'He's fallen off the roof... The garage roof. I wasn't watching them. I didn't know they were up there... Okay... Yes... Okay. Tim?... Please hurry.'

The ambulance man helped her up into the back. Nicole was telling her not to worry. She'd look after the kids. She was sure Josh would be fine. Tim would meet her at the hospital. Chloe was shouting for her, and Nicole picked her up. The double doors closed, and she welcomed the quiet as she watched the gentle rise and fall of Josh's chest, trying not to look at the equipment, trying to concentrate on her own breathing.

They took Josh in through the ambulance bay, but the doors swung open on the crowded waiting room. Harriet thought of when she had been there before: once, pregnant with Josh, when she had been convinced he had stopped moving; once when Tim had cut himself with garden shears and needed a couple of st.i.tches in his thumb. Both times she had moaned about being kept waiting, tutting with the others at the infuriating red blinking sign telling her it would be another 120 minutes, 90 minutes, 60 minutes before she was seen. How she wished she was being shown into that waiting room now, to queue for the grumpy triage nurse with the other walking wounded. The speed of the staff around Josh was the scariest thing. That, and the closed curtains, the quiet voices.

Everyone wanted to know how it had happened. Every question felt like an accusation. Yes, she wanted to scream. Yes, my seven-year-old son was on my garage roof. No, I don't know why.

The paramedics were leaving now, the ones who'd brought them in. 'Don't worry, love, he's in good hands.'

She felt herself going wobbly, disoriented by the sights, the smells and the speed of it all. A young nurse put a hand gently on her arm. 'Come on, Mrs...? Let's sit you down a minute, out here.'

She didn't want to leave him, but she let herself be led towards a chair. The nurse sat her down, told her she'd find her a cup of tea, that the doctors would be out to see her in a few minutes, let her know what was going on, not to worry. That was what everyone said. What a spurious remark it was. They should be taught, in training, never to say that, even as an act of kindness.

Harriet couldn't keep still. She stood up and paced the small corridor, reading the signs for Pathology and X-ray and Ladies' Toilets, and watching a little boy with a ban daged leg playing in the toy corner. His mother caught her eye and smiled an anxious smile, but she could barely return it.

He couldn't die, could he? She might already have spoken the last words he would ever hear her say. Given him the last cuddle, the last kiss, the last telling-off. It was too big an idea to fit inside her; she thought she might explode. It might already be finished behind that curtain. Suddenly she didn't want it to be pulled back, to read a face coming from in there, see a head shaken in defeat. As long as the curtain was closed she could pretend they were fixing him, hard at work on giving her baby back to her. She couldn't take a deep breath. It felt like her lungs weren't expanding.

She needed some fresh air. She was afraid she would faint, although she never had before, and she didn't want to do that here, in front of everyone. She told the nurse she would be back in a minute, and went through to the hospital foyer. It felt normal and surreal there. A couple of workmen were up a ladder, fixing a fluorescent strip-light. They were listening to a radio; the younger one was singing along to a current hit record. This might be the soundtrack of his dying, she thought.

Tim was coming through the front door towards her. She felt extraordinary relief at the sight of him. He opened his arms and she dropped her full weight into them. 'Okay. Okay. I'm here.' For a full minute he held her tightly, not speaking. Then he steered her round, and began to walk them both in the direction of paediatric casualty. 'How is he?'

'I don't know. They haven't told me anything yet.'

'Has he woken up?'

'No. Tim, it was my fault, I wasn't watching them. I'm so sorry.' And Tim's presence somehow made it possible for her to cry for the first time since she'd heard George's scream.

Her tears had always slain him. She looked like the girl from the flat, all those years ago. Blotchy and pathetic and utterly his. 'Don't be stupid, darling. You can't watch them every minute. You've been so tired. They're boys, that's all. No one's blaming you, least of all me.'

'I'm so glad you're here.'

'Of course I'm here. He's our son.'

Everything else, all the stuff you thought about when you didn't have anything more important to do, faded away. She felt it. This was so simple, so black and white in the world of grey. He's our son and we don't want to live without him. Give him back to us. Give him back.

Tim got back to the house at around midnight. They had called at around eight to say that Josh had been sent up for a CT scan, and that they'd know more then. Martha and Chloe had fallen asleep at more or less the normal time, wrapped up together under Chloe's quilt. She'd sent the boys up to the spare room after Tim's call, but they hadn't gone to sleep for a couple of hours. Nicole had tried to watch television, tried flicking through a magazine, but she hadn't been able to concentrate. Instead, she had mopped the kitchen floor and dried all the Barbies, and she had worked out the mess in the television room, meticulously returning everything on the floor to its correct box. Harriet wouldn't believe it when she saw it Nicole had never seen it so ordered. She had been about to start on the fridge, where apparently Harriet was growing a cure for leprosy on a piece of Parmesan, when she saw Tim's lights and went to meet him at the door.

'How is he?' She had her arms around him.

'No change, still in a coma. They say he might be for days.'

'What about the scan?'

'His brain is bruised and swollen, but there aren't any clots.'

'That's good, isn't it?'

Tim shrugged his shoulders, and wiped his hand across his forehead. He looked sweaty and exhausted. 'Yeah.'

'I'll make you a cup of tea. Are you hungry?'

'I'm not, Nic. Tea'd be great, though.' He sat at the kitchen table and put his face into his hands. When he spoke it was through his fingers. 'I've got to go back in a minute. They've found a bed for Harry. She's going to stay with him tonight and I've got to take her a few things.'

'Do you want me to sort some out?'

'Would you?'

'How's she doing?'

'Oh, you know Harriet. She's in pieces, thinks it's her fault.'

'That's crazy.' Nicole could hear Harriet saying it.

'I've told her so.' He took the mug she handed him gratefully, and drank the tea although it was still too hot. 'How's Chloe? And the others?'

'They're asleep. I'll take mine home in a bit. Do you want me to take Chloe?'

'No need. Let the others sleep too. They've had a shock. Why don't you all stay tonight? We'll see where we are in the morning.' Tim didn't want to be alone. Neither did Nicole.

Nicole found some things for Harriet one of her voluminous Victorian cotton nighties and her socks-with-treads, which she had laughed out loud at on a dozen occasions, clean knickers, her tooth- and hairbrushes. She put in the book she was half-way through, although she couldn't imagine her reading, and some chocolate. Harriet hadn't even taken her handbag that afternoon, so Nicole packed that then added clean clothes for the morning. She wondered whether Josh needed anything. Then she remembered the backless gowns, and the mummy-like bandage tights. She couldn't imagine Josh in them. He was never still. Even as a small baby he'd been bouncing and shuffling and lurching, always hurrying on to the next thing. He had been the first to crawl, walk and run, and always the last to climb on to a lap for a story or a rest. Don't let him die, or be damaged so that he isn't Josh any more. She hated that idea for all of them, for Tim, Harriet and Chloe, but also for her and the boys, who adored him. For their friendship, and their parallel lives, and for so many other reasons. Please let Josh be okay, she prayed, to someone. An atheist's prayers said quietly into the ether.

'You tell her I love her,' she said to Tim, as she handed him the bag.

'I will. Thanks for this.' He held the bag aloft. 'For all of it.'

'Hey.' She hugged him briefly.

'I'll see you later.'

He didn't have time or room for her, beyond his simple thanks. He looked smaller, and older, as he walked towards the car. His whole world had shrunk to a small room full of machines and hope.

Susan People you didn't expect came to funerals. With some it was hard to figure out how they had known Alice had died. Did they scan the death columns daily, looking for names they knew? Susan supposed they must, especially when they were older. A couple of weeks ago an American comedian had been joking on television about British death announcements: it must be a weird country, he said, because people only ever died 'suddenly' or 'peacefully' you never read that anyone died fuming with injustice, or clamouring for another breath. No one wanted to think about that, she supposed. She wanted Alice to have died peacefully. Roger said she would have done. And that was what the paper said: 'Alice, aged 71, peacefully at The Cedars, widow of Jonathan, mother of Susan and Margaret, grandmother to Alexander and Edward. No flowers, please, but donations to...' She'd thought about all the adjectives she had written one embellished with much-loveds and adoreds and treasureds, but it hadn't felt right. Anyone who had known her and them didn't need telling. Anyone who didn't, didn't need to know.

The boys were here, of course, looking absurdly grownup, and Sandy, from Roger's practice, a few staff from the home, on a three-line whip, perhaps, a few old friends. Roger, Margaret. But there were also the people she hadn't expected: the pharmacist from Alice's local chemist, the librarian, Mabel's daughter Louise, who had patted her arm when she came in, although she barely knew her. And there were some people who, she was more or less convinced, had had nothing to do with Alice professional mourners, who frequented crematoriums as she had hovered outside the church on Sat.u.r.day mornings when she was a little girl, looking for brides and bridesmaids to admire. Only this lot were looking for something else. She hoped they wouldn't be disappointed.

She had eschewed lilies for roses on top of the coffin. Alice had loved roses, and these were pink, her favourite. She knew Alice wouldn't have wanted a lot of flowers she would have thought it a waste, except for a baby or a child, but Susan had been to the crematorium before: after the ceremony they would be herded out to look at the patch of gra.s.s headed with Alice's name, empty of flowers and probably flanked by a display of giant words in carnations mum, sis from a funeral half an hour before. She couldn't quite bear that. Alice would have been quietly cross with her for worrying. She called it 'polishing the step'. She knew a woman, years ago, whose house was a mess, but who kept her bra.s.s front step polished so you could see your face in it more anxious to impress strangers than she was to see to the comfort of her own family. Alice wasn't here though. Susan had told them, at the florists, to put a lot of roses in the arrangement.

They were going to sing 'All Things Bright and Beautiful', and 'The Day Thou Gavest'. She had thought about one of Alice's favourite songs Barbra Streisand, maybe, or Charlotte Church singing 'Pie Jesu' but good taste had prevailed over sentimentality.

They'd been laughing about it last night, she and the boys. Alex was talking about some film where a guy was cremated to the sound of the Rolling Stones 'You Can't Always Get What You Want'. They had giggled themselves to where 'Burn baby burn, disco inferno', with Ed, as the vicar, performing Sat.u.r.day Night Fever gyrations coffin-side, was the funniest suggestion they had ever heard.

Alex had sobered first. 'Sorry, Mum. Unbelievably sick.' Susan, who had enjoyed the light relief as much as any of them, put her arm round his shoulder and pulled his head under her chin. 'Nothing to be sorry about, darling.' Ed came too, and joined the hug from behind her chair. 'Listen, boys, this is okay. It wasn't a tragedy, your gran dying the way she did. She'd had a full life, and she was suffering, I know she was, inside herself somewhere. It was time. It's sad, but it isn't a tragedy. That's a baby or a child, like my friend Harriet's boy who's in a coma right now, or a father with a young family to raise. Not an old woman who has lived to see her children and grandchildren grow up happy.' Alex squeezed her hand.

'The waiting's tough, but that's all. Funerals, in my view, should be held as soon as possible. Muslims and Jews have the right idea. Get it over with. It's just a body, I know that, but until it's gone, you can't get on with your life.'

They had been waiting for Margaret. She'd taken the news badly, apparently, burst into tears, unable to speak. She'd put the phone down on Susan, called back a few minutes later, only to dissolve again. A friend of hers, Lindy, had rung back an hour or so later, said that Margaret was too upset to speak, but that she would make arrangements to come over for the funeral.

She'd decided to come for a few weeks, she said. It had taken time to sort it all out time when Susan lay in bed at night and pictured Alice in a freezer at the funeral home, and wished she could get on with it.

Margaret wasn't staying with them. Characteristically vague, she had said something about a house-swap with some English relatives of a friend of a friend. They didn't have an address, just a mobile-phone number for her. Just how Margaret liked it. Susan wondered briefly whether she was hurt that her sister didn't want to be near her and the boys or relieved that her sometimes malevolent and always stressful presence wasn't in her home all the time. Relief won out. Convincingly.

She hadn't seen her until this morning. And now Margaret was crying again, inconsolably, in the row opposite. Alone. Susan had gestured to her when she arrived, gently shoving Ed and Alex up to make room for her, but Margaret had given her a weak smile, a brief shake of her head, and had slid into the front row next to theirs.

Susan couldn't look at her. She had put the pad of her thumb against the pad of her forefinger, both hands, and was pushing them together as hard as she could. It stopped the tears, she didn't know why. Roger's black shoulder grazed her on one side, Alex's, taller, on the other. Both were ready to offer support, but she stood up straight.

Afterwards Polly was at the house first. She looked glamorous, Susan thought, with her curls pinned back into submission, and her smart black suit. She put her arms round Susan, who relaxed briefly into the embrace, then pulled back and looked around her. 'Nice to see a bit of a crowd for her.'

'She was a gorgeous woman,' Polly replied, with a shrug. Her glance took in Margaret, apparently deep in conversation, her face still tear-mottled. 'She's a strange one, your sister, isn't she? Do you think she was so upset because she wasn't around when it happened?'

'She hasn't been around for years. I've given up trying to second-guess Maggie. She's been so odd about the whole thing, from the moment Mum got ill, like she was blaming me. Mind you, she's always been odd.'

'Doesn't look like a face that does much smiling.'

'I think that's it. She's one of those people who's never happy. Jealous, I think. Always looking around to see who might be better off.'

'Which makes her about as different from you as it's possible to be, my friend.'

'Who knows? Can't be bothered with it today.'

Polly shifted her attention back to her friend. 'How are you doing?'

'Better now. I hated not being able to get on with the funeral. G.o.d knows how people must feel who can't bury their dead, or whatever, for months and months, like murder victims and things. It just hangs over you, such a potent image.' She closed her eyes tight, opened them again. 'And that bit's over now.'

'You made it lovely.' Polly was trying to say the right thing. They looked at each other and laughed quietly.

'Yes, the nicest funeral I've been to in ages!'

At that moment Margaret came up. Her face was stony. 'What's funny?' The tone was innocuous, but the voice, with its Australian tw.a.n.g, and the face were hard.

'Nothing.'

'I'm Polly, Susan's friend.'

'Nice to meet you.' Margaret barely acknowledged her with the half-smile she had given Susan in the crematorium, which didn't reach her eyes. 'Having a nice time?'

Oh, G.o.d, Susan thought, she's spoiling for a fight. Dread, plus more than a little anger, rose in her. 'No, Margaret, I'm not having a nice time. This is our mother's funeral.'

'You're in your element, aren't you, though, arranging things? Especially arranging things for Mum. Done quite a bit of that this year, haven't you?'

Polly couldn't believe the nastiness. It was like a bad scene from a soap opera. If she'd been Susan, her hand would have been itching to slap Margaret, but Susan looked as if she might cry. Polly looked around the living room, but she couldn't see Roger or the boys.

'Please don't start, Maggie, not today. If you're angry although G.o.d knows why you should be we can talk, but not today, not with everyone here.' Her voice was imploring.

Margaret seemed to shrink back a little. She bent towards Susan, and her next words were almost a whisper, meant only for Susan's ears. 'Okay, not here. But I'm around for a while now, Susan. I'm going to be there when you sort the house out. I'm a part of this, whether you like it or not, and you can't shut me out.'

Now irritation rose in Susan. What the h.e.l.l was she talking about? Shut her out? Who had made all the phone calls, tried to include her in all the decisions, to persuade her to share the burden of their mother's failing health? She had shut the door on Susan at every stage. The visit earlier in the year had been an unmitigated disaster Susan had hoped that when her sister saw Alice she would understand, see that what she had done she had done for the right reasons, without a viable choice. She had thought it would make things better but it had only turned Margaret more against her. What did she mean she was going to stay around while Susan sorted out the house? Did she want to make sure Susan didn't fleece her out of her share of Alice's meagre possessions? That was a new low, even for Margaret.

'Fine, Maggie. Whatever you want. You can do the whole f.u.c.king lot if you like. It's about time you pulled your weight.'

Polly couldn't remember Susan ever swearing that way before. Good for you, she thought. Poisonous cow. Margaret, too, was temporarily silenced.

Polly went into rescue mode. 'Oh, I forgot to tell you, Suze. Great news! Nicole rang me last night to say that Josh is in the clear. He'll stay in for another couple of days, and Harriet with him, but then they think he can come home and he's going to be fine.' Polly linked her arm through Susan's and turned her away from Margaret.

'That's fantastic news. Just brilliant.' For the first time that day, tears welled in Susan's eyes, for Harriet, Tim and Josh. And for Alice.

'I just don't know what her problem is,' she said later, to Roger. The last of the visitors had left an hour ago, and they had loaded the dishwasher with all the cups, saucers and gla.s.ses, hoovered the hall and living room, and straightened the cushions on the sofas. She'd changed out of her black dress and shoes, and they were sitting together, with yet another cup of tea, her back against his shoulder.

'Don't waste any more of your energy worrying about it, darling. She's a pernicious, damaged, vindictive woman, and it's nothing to do with you. I don't know what life has dished up to her in Australia, but I'm guessing it wasn't the Utopia she dreamed of. Then again, I think Maggie has the power to poison any well where she sets up camp. Probably drove that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d Greg to distraction. I'm surprised he lasted as long as she says he did. Forget about her.'

'I can't, though, can I? She's my sister. She's all there is left now. And she's here. In my face. In Mum's house, no doubt.'

'You can forget about her. And she isn't all there is what are the boys and me? Chopped liver?'

'Course not. You know what I mean.'

'I don't, sweetheart. I honestly don't. All right, so she'll always be your sister. Blood may well be thicker than water. But so what? A sister who is mean-spirited, unloving, possibly greedy and just b.l.o.o.d.y weird isn't a prize to be valued above all else. Or even a cross to be borne. You don't need it. You don't have to do it. Get the house thing over with give her what she wants and let that be an end to it. Sod her.'

Susan slid round, and put her arms around his neck. 'You see everything so straightforwardly, don't you?'

He kissed her forehead. 'So do you, most of the time. She's your Achilles heel, that's all.'

She sighed. 'You're right.'

'I love you.'