It’s like the shoes. He doesn’t turn along the Marston Ferry Road towards the hospital. He is taking her home. The decision has already been taken. Or is he just looking for an excuse?
He parks outside the house and leaves the engine running and there is a moment of balance when the day could roll either way, but when he imagines walking her into A&E and handing her to a nurse and watching her vanish through those automated doors he feels something painful for which he doesn’t have a name. He twists the key and takes it out of the ignition. He lets the dogs out, unclips her seat belt, lifts her onto her feet then into his arms.
“I don’t want…”
“It’s not the hospital.” He kicks the door shut.
Having juggled her sideways down the hall he lays her on the sofa where she curls up like a dormouse. The shivering has become shaking. He drags the old bar fire from the bottom of the coat cupboard. Central heating on, thermostat to 22. He realises, only now, that he will need to undress her if he is going to get her warm and dry. Maria’s voice in his head. How did this not occur to you? Fran is in the spare armchair. He can hear Leo eating biscuits from the clangy metal bowl in the kitchen. He goes upstairs. Tracksuit bottoms, sweatshirt, woolly socks, towel.
“I’m getting you into dry clothes.” She does not respond. He unlaces her black boots. The smell of burning dust as the elements heat up and turn orange. A flash of Timothy when he was tiny. Buckles and poppers and Velcro. Socks off.
He unbuttons her denim skirt, puts a hand under her hips, lifts her an inch or two off the rug, pulls it out then rolls down her torn black leggings. His hand briefly pressed to her flesh, the weight of her. Scrawny thighs and damp white knickers with pink roses on. A tiny rose of pink ribbon on the waistband. A little curl of pubic hair coming out from under the hem. That long bloody cut on goose-pimpled skin. Memories of being this close to other young bodies. Maria, Jane Taylor, Mona Kerr, Jamila, a woman at a party in Dalston whose name went long ago but whose laugh and whose perfect plump stomach come back to him in dreams every now and then. The thrill of unwrapping someone for the first time.
He starts to take her sodden knickers off but it frightens him, what he might feel, what she might think. He leaves them on and pats her dry as best he can. Blood on the towel. He pushes the bar fire back a little and slips the tracksuit trousers on, one leg at a time. They are ridiculously baggy. He sits her up and slips his socks over her tiny feet.
“Where am I?”
He slides her tartan shirt off and shows her the sweatshirt. “You need to put this on.”
She’s gone again, fuzzy, uncompliant. Bloody hell. He lifts her T-shirt. No bra. The fear that someone is going to materialise at the window or walk through the door. Skinny ribs and small breasts. Such pale skin. He leans forward to pull the T-shirt over her head and down her arms, trying to touch her as little as possible. He sits back and can’t stop himself. He looks at her, naked from the waist up, for thirty seconds maybe, unable to take his eyes away. To his surprise he is on the verge of tears. So many lost things. He cloaks her with the towel, gently rubbing her arms and back and shoulders. Like Timothy after a bath. More gently still he presses the towel to her chest and stomach. The soft give of her breasts under his hand. He puts the towel aside and slips the sweatshirt over her head. Right arm, left arm. He lifts her briefly to remove the dog rug and flip the wet cushions over.
Leo comes into the room and stands watching them, unsettled, on guard, never quite relaxed with new people.
He moves behind the sofa so he can dry her hair while holding her head steady against his stomach. Timothy again. Feelings that shouldn’t be sharing the same space in his head. He has never felt so old. He puts the towel down. “I’ll get you a hot drink.” She flops sideways and curls up again. She’s shaking less. Or is that wishful thinking?
Only when he tries to put the kettle on does he become aware of how bone-cold he is himself. A slab of ice is stacked against his spine. He feels feverish. It’s a relief to have this single, simple sensation consume him. He has to hold on to the banister on the way upstairs. He drops his clothes on the bathroom floor. He should have a hot shower but he can’t leave her on her own down there. He dries himself with a new towel from the airing cupboard and pulls on his jeans, a shirt, the big jumper Maria bought for him in Oslo. Walking socks then a scarf from the newel post. That cold slab still sitting at his core.
The kettle rumbles to a climax and clicks off. Instant coffee for speed, with a spoonful of sugar. He sits her up and she helps a little this time. “Hold this.” She puts her hands around the mug at least and balances it on her knees.
He says, “You’re all right now,” which sounds ridiculous as soon as he says it, because it might be a disaster, finding yourself alive after putting yourself through all that. A memory of the water, the sheer mass and speed of it. How close he came.
She leans her head back, eyes closed, and breathes out. She’s ugly almost. The blonde hair had fooled him. Big features, wonky nose. “Fuck,” she says. “Fucking fuck.”
He’s never been comfortable with people swearing. “My name’s Ian.”
She doesn’t offer her own.
“Why didn’t you want to go to hospital?”
She lifts her head and opens her eyes and looks at the tracksuit trousers, the sweatshirt, the socks. “What did you do to me?”
“I put you into dry clothes.”
“Did you rape me?”
He is too surprised to think of an answer.
“You took my clothes off.” She’s panicking. “Where are my clothes?”
A rush of terror. The thoughts that came into his head undressing her. Was she just pretending to be unconscious? “You jumped into the river.”
She is suddenly calm again. “Yeh. I do that kind of thing.” She laughs a humourless laugh.
His heart is hammering. “But you’re alive.”
“They stick needles into you.” She sounds drunk. He wonders if she took pills before going to the river. Belt and braces. “They cover you in wires, like a monkey in a lab. They find out what you’re thinking.”
“Your clothes are in the kitchen.” The adrenaline is ebbing a little. “I’ll dry them for you.”
“The small print on that form no one reads?” She drinks the sugary coffee. “They can do anything.”
Were they really in the Thames less than half an hour ago?
“I fuck everything up. It’s my thing.”
The sour self-pity in her voice, daring him to reach out and have his hand slapped away. He’s disappointed to realise that he doesn’t like her very much. “Sorry I saved you.” It’s meant to sound wry and funny, but he’s shocked by how close it comes to what he’s feeling.
“I’m so fucking cold.”
He fetches her a scarf left years ago by some forgetful dinner guest. “Why did you do it?”
“Like you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
“You’re just being nice.” She does quote marks with her fingers, like she’s fifteen. “No one actually cares.”
He bites his lip. He’s surprised at how angry he is. Then he can’t stop himself. “You don’t throw a life away.” It’s Timothy he’s thinking about, of course, the nights when he never came home, those God-awful, semi-homeless friends, the smell of them. “Someone cares. Your parents, your brother, your sister, your friends, your neighbours, your doctor, the teachers you had at school, at college, even if it’s only the poor bastard who has to pull your body out of the river…” He’s choking up a little. He’s never thought of it this way, that lives are held in common, that we lose a little something of ourselves with every death. Or is it just the desperate hope that some frail strand still connects him to his son, the tiny tug of which might one day bring him home?