An explosion. He could remember an explosion, or at least he thought he could. His mind flooded with images of another time in his life when there had been fire and pain, but it wasn't that. This was different.
'Fortunately your injuries do not appear to be as severe as we first feared. A few bumps and scratches, and you cracked a rib, but nothing broken. Nothing we can't mend.'
There was a crate. He could remember the crate, and the ship. He had been there with Frank, and Wilf, and Hassan.
'Hassan…' he said, 'and the others. What about the others?'
Dr Hutchins took off his glasses and bit his lower lip.
'I'm sorry, Michael,' he said. 'I don't know how to tell you this, but they weren't as lucky as you.'
Standing, Dr Hutchins turned to Nurse Collins.
'Are there any family we need to notify?'
'Yes,' said Nurse Collins. 'His sister. She lives in Butetown. She was here yesterday.'
Dr Hutchins nodded, and then looked back down at Michael. He smiled. It was a smile Michael supposed he gave all his patients, especially, perhaps, the ones he felt sorry for. As he left the ward, Nurses Collins and Gait followed, and Michael was alone.
His sister came to see him later that afternoon. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she wasn't wearing any make-up. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her without make-up. Perhaps when their father had died.
'I was so worried,' she said, squeezing his hand so hard it almost hurt. 'When they told me, about Frank, and Wilf, and the other boy-' 'Hassan,' said Michael, tearfully.
'Oh God,' said his sister. 'I didn't want to lose you. I mean, I've got Rhodri, and the baby, but you… You're my brother.'
She kissed him on the forehead before leaving, and told him there would be a roast dinner waiting for him when he got home. It made him happy to see her smiling when she left.
He slept badly that night. The old man in the bed opposite spent much of the night wailing, crying out for the nurses and his 'Mam', even though he couldn't have been any younger than eighty. Michael could do little more than look out through his window at the night sky and the waning moon, and think about nothing else but the crate and the explosion.
He could remember everything now; the Swedish ship appearing through the fog, the noise inside the crate, and then the blast. Something had happened during the explosion, something he couldn't describe. To him it hadn't sounded like an explosion. He had heard bombs as a child, and it hadn't sounded like that. It had sounded like a bass drum, or perhaps the single ringing of an enormous bell, somewhere inside of him. His whole body had tingled as if he were being pricked by hundreds of thousands of microscopic pins and, though his eyes were closed, he could still see that brilliant white light, like a billion suns; a light that seemed to pass through him.
In the morning he was woken by Nurse Collins, who removed the gastric tube from his nose, which caused him to gag, and brought him a cup of tea and a slice of half-burnt toast. The old man in the bed opposite was now sleeping like a baby, worn out, presumably, by a night of anguished crying.
It was mid-morning when the visitors arrived.
Two men, both dressed in suits. One was in his early thirties, Michael guessed; the other looked a little older. The younger, taller man had a dramatic scar on the left side of his face and a hang-dog expression. The older and shorter man had large, dark eyes and heavy eyebrows. Sitting in a chair beside the bed, it was the older man who spoke first.
'Good morning, Mr Bellini. I trust you're feeling well?'
Michael nodded and asked them who they were.
'My name is Mr Cromwell, and this is Mr Valentine. We work for the Union. We're just here to ask you a few questions.'
Michael nodded again, but said nothing.
'Do you remember anything about the explosion on Thursday night?'
Michael thought for a moment. How should he answer their question? Something about this didn't feel right. They didn't look like anyone from the Union. They looked like policemen.
'No,' he said at last. 'Not much. Nothing, really.'
Cromwell looked up at Valentine, and then turned back to Michael. 'I see. We're still investigating the cause of the explosion. It's possible there may have been an issue with certain materials that were in the vicinity.'
And that line. It didn't sound right. It was clumsy, as if Cromwell was stalling, or making it up as he went along.
'Other than your injuries have you noticed any other… problems… at all?' asked Cromwell.
Michael shook his head.
'Any feelings of nausea? Headaches? Strange dreams?'
Why would somebody from the Union need to know anything about headaches or strange dreams? Michael looked out into the corridor, hoping to catch the attention of one of the nurses. If he could only pretend to be in more pain, they might come in and tell Cromwell and Valentine to give him a little peace.
'Have you experienced anything… unusual?' Cromwell asked.
'No,' said Michael. 'No… I… nothing like that, no.'
'I see. Well, we may need to ask you a few more questions when you're feeling a little bit better. You aren't planning on leaving Cardiff any time soon, are you?'
Michael shook his head.
'Good. Good. Well, I think we're done for now. We'll speak to you again, Mr Bellini. Get well soon.'
Cromwell stood, and both he and Valentine gave Cheshire cat grins that didn't sit comfortably on their faces, particularly Valentine's, before they walked out of the ward.
Michael was released from the hospital the following day. There was nobody to meet him at the door. His sister was working at the cigarette factory and his brother-in-law, Rhodri, was at the docks. Though his legs still ached, he walked all the way back to Butetown in the plain, drab and ill-fitting clothes that the hospital had given him.
By the time he reached the narrow and canyon-like streets of Butetown that surrounded Tiger Bay, it was late afternoon, and already he could hear piano music spilling out of the pubs. He heard the raucous laughter of the Irishmen playing cards, and the incomprehensible chattering of the Chinese women in the laundries. Children played in the streets where sailors sauntered toward brothels, while the occasional policeman turned a blind eye to anything that wasn't threatening to turn into a brawl.
These sights were familiar to him by now, of course. He'd lived in the shadowy and smoke-filled confines of Butetown since his mother died. Their father had brought them down here to be closer to his work at the docks, when he was still working. Soon enough, of course, he'd lost his job; a short while after, he started drinking. They'd lived together, his father, his sister and Michael, in the downstairs of a terraced house, beneath a first-generation Italian family that argued and fought at all hours.
Michael knew Butetown like the back of his hand and yet, walking back into it that afternoon, it felt as if something had changed. The buildings looked different, somehow, as if they'd been remade from a different stone. Everything seemed more real.
The tiny house on Fitzhamon Terrace that he shared with his sister's family embraced him with the smell of a leg of lamb roasting slowly in the oven. He sat alone in the kitchen, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes until his sister came home, carrying his baby nephew over the threshold.
'Oh, you're home!' she said excitedly. 'Let me just put Robert in his cot. Food won't be long, and Rhodri's home soon.'
Rhodri was a little older than Michael and his sister, a surly and sardonic man who Michael had always found strangely intimidating. He'd never been sure what Maria saw in him, but she had always been quick to point out that without Rhodri they'd be homeless. Once he'd finished his shift at the docks, and spent the best part of half an hour soaking in the bath in the lean-to, the family sat around the table, with baby Robert in his high chair, playing with a plastic rattle and a teething ring.