Star Shot (7 page)

In the space of a fortnight these encounters are noticeably fewer. Over half the benches, as often as not, are empty; the sitters seem to come less often, and there are one or two people he hasn't seen at all, in spite of some bright days, some lovely days, when the whole business of sitting on a Cardiff bench might be something, he thinks, that you could do with complete and utter conviction.

24.

When he comes back twenty minutes later from sitting beside his sleeping mother Myra is propped up in bed with her fruit salad, picking out the pomegranate seeds and eating them thoughtfully, one at a time. There is a slightly disconcerting brightness about her eyes. The nurse brings them both tea.

He settles in the chair beside her bed; the same chair as the one beside his mother, he thinks; doing exactly the same job. You sit next to them and they are miles away.
Oh Myra what is the matter with you
. He would like to reach over and gently touch her face but understands that he must not touch her at all. So he nods, sideways.

Better?

Yes. She offers him the tub of fruit and his unwieldy fingers find a grape.

Good. He fishes in his bag for a book and pulls it out. Do you mind, he says, I mean is it OK if I sit here for a bit? My mother is fast asleep and my train isn't for a while.

She just smiles. He smiles back.

Do you read much? he says, gesturing pointlessly at his book.

No, she says. Never.

He raises his eyebrows.

It's what I do for a living, she says defensively. All day long. Copy editing. Commas and capitals and the spaces in between. Why would I read at home?

Different kind of reading, he says sternly. Quite different. Why not?

Eyes, she says. They get tired. And I get tired; I don't need all those words.

So what do you do?

Radio, music. Cook. Telly sometimes. And knitting.

I thought you city folks hung out in bars the whole time, or the cinema, or the theatre.

Not me, she said. Not ever. What about you?

When I'm not at the pond, or working, or cooking for my mother, yes, I read.

What do you read?

He grins. Stuff about ponds, mostly.

And your work?

Ah, well, yes. That's ponds too.

Which is perfectly true, he thinks, so why does it suddenly seem so funny? Her eyes are bright with laughter.

No, really. We have a small company, a co-operative thing,
Corsydd Cymru/Welsh Wetlands
. We have a website and a logo and everything.

Conservation, she says, rolling it nicely on her tongue.

It's more proactive than that, he says.

She finishes the fruit and licks her fingers. Drinks her cold tea with a wrinkled nose. Then she settles back into her pillows and closes her eyes. He can't tell what kind of pain it is that flickers across her face. Her eyes open wide and stare at the ceiling.

I'm too frightened to go to sleep again.

If you would just let me hold your hand
, he thinks. But says, instead: It won't happen again, not like that, it never does. You'll sleep fine this time, it won't come back.

It might. I can feel it. Waiting.

Is it a dream you've had before?

She shudders. No, she says. I have bad dreams sometimes but this one is quite, quite new.

He should change the subject but can't. Is there any point, he says slowly, almost off-hand, holding his breath, is there any point talking? Exorcism…

No, she says swiftly. No. No. Her face closes down and she turns her head away from him.

Then I'll read to you, he says. This is Charles Fort. He's mad, but great to read out loud. Mam likes him a lot. 1904, this is.
The Book of the Damned
. He collects scientific anomalies; he especially likes things falling out of the sky:

I think of a region somewhere above this earth's surface in which gravitation is inoperative…

I think that things raised from this earth's surface to that region have been held there until shaken down by storms…

The Super-Sargasso Sea.

Derelicts, rubbish, old cargoes from interplanetary wrecks; things cast into what is called space by convulsions of other planets, things from the times of the Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons of Mars and Jupiter and Neptune; things raised by this earth's cyclones: horses and barns and elephants and flies and dodoes, moas and pterodactyls; leaves from modern trees and leaves of the Carboniferous era – all, however, tending to disintegrate into homogenous-looking muds or dusts, red or black or yellow – fishes dried and hard, there a short time: others there long enough to putrefy…

She relaxes into it. Smiles at the elephants, and finally interrupts to ask why on earth he would be reading it? It is not, she says, even remotely about ponds.

Ah but you're wrong. There's quite a lot about ponds, ponds in space, falling out of the sky, it's how he explains all those falls of little frogs and live fish, listen to this:

We accept that there are bodies of water and also clear spaces – bottoms of ponds dropping out – very interesting ponds, having no earth at bottom…

That there is water – oceans or lakes or ponds, or rivers of it – that there is water away from, and yet not far-remote from, this earth's atmosphere and gravitation…

The pain of it:

A whole new science to learn:

The Science of Super-Geography

And all these things falling out of the sky, he says, is what causes star-jelly, star-rot, star-slubber, whatever you call it: it is the stuff brought down in meteor falls. Or so says Fort. Quite wrongly, obviously.

Obviously, says Myra. What jelly?

He finds a photo on his phone – it's like it looks, gloopy, translucent stuff, sicked up by herons, I think. It doesn't appear very often, but there was a lot of it about this year earlier on. I've got some people in the Natural History section of the museum working on it. Or possibly not. I think they've probably lost it. That's why I was going in, he added, when I saw you that time.

I don't remember.

No. You were very upset. You didn't see me.

There is a powerful silence from the bed. He looks at her sideways. You can't get any paler, woman, he thinks. Stop it. Now.

Something happened in there, didn't it? What idiocy made him ask her that? He is braced for something sharp, something bitter, in response. But she just sounds genuinely puzzled.

In where?

In the museum. You were coming down the steps.

Oh… I see. No. No. I don't go in.

What, never? He is astonished again.

No. Why? Should I?

I… well, No. I just thought you spent a lot of time there.

I do. But not inside. And anyway, she adds suspiciously, how do you know I am there a lot?

Theo shrugs, busy puzzling something out. A man called Luke. American. iPad.

Is he a friend of yours?

No. Not at all, I met him once.

And you talked about
me
? Are you here because of him? Her eyes are dark smudges, she is weak and wild, and they are both trembling on the verge of not understanding each other at all. He gets suddenly to his feet, a baffled giant, and walks angrily two or three times around the foot of her bed. Then he stops and looks down at her, directly into her face.

I am here, he says, because my mother is ill. The rest is coincidence. Believe that, or don't believe it, as you wish; it isn't important. What is important is that something happened to you in the…

And it dawns on him.

…no
, on the steps of the museum, just outside, wasn't it? Myra. Myra listen. I think I know what happened. Tell me. It was just outside, wasn't it?

She will not look at him looking at her, stares fiercely at the empty wall ahead.

He will miss his train, he thinks. He doesn't know if he can leave her. He is not angry now.
Oh Myra, what is the matter with you?
He reaches for his bag and the book, and puts his jacket on.

I have to go, he says, more gently. But I'll come back tomorrow, and I think, if you won't tell me, that I can tell you what happened on the steps. But this is too much now. I'll come back. Get some sleep.

When she finally looks up at him her eyes are wet with tears.

It doesn't want me, she says.

25.

They set out again through the busy streets. He guides her a complicated route, picking out a path against the traffic and the people through the maze of silent threads. Sometimes he warns her when they are about to cross one, or briefly follow a trail; sometimes he doesn't tell her, and watches to see how she reacts. Some seem to slip past her without making a mark, but others cause a ripple of concentration across her face. She turns to him for confirmation; he nods and shows her the map. They visit several of Luke's benches, each caught in a noose of silence, their sitters vanished or moved on. She has put her phone away in her coat pocket and started using her hands to drop occasional comments into the air. A few of her phrases come back to him, half-remembered, he has forgotten the language, but her expressive face tells him most of what he needs to know. His own hands hover close in the air around her, and he guides her through town with the gentlest touch of her elbow, a brush of fingers on her coat.

Outside the museum, though, he stops and begins to text again. He tells her about the thick wall of silence wrapped like a huge snake around the building; his team, he says, have been monitoring it. He finds a recent report in his emails and hands her the phone for her to read it: it is putting the public off, they think, even though most of them don't notice it; it seems to be turning them away at some subconscious level, you can see them on the steps hovering about and changing their minds. The museum authorities are very concerned about the effect on footfall, especially with the Easter holidays coming up. Staff, says the report, are demoralised; a lot are phoning in sick.

She nods and hands back the phone. Stands with her hands deep in the pockets of her big coat and looks at the building critically for a few moments, before making her way very slowly up the steps. He stands on the red tarmac, watching her.

She halts two or three steps from the top and puts a hand on the railing, as if to steady herself, stays very still for a few seconds and then turns and heads back down to the road with a cold, sour look on her face. She shakes her head as if to throw off an unpleasantness, and her eyes tell him she doesn't know what is going on. He smiles and takes one of her cold hands between both of his and lifts it briefly to his lips. None of us know, he says. It's unsettling us all.

Strong enough for the castle? It's nearly half past.

She nods.

They ignore the sideways underpass and head decisively straight ahead. And then stand, foolishly, as people always do, balanced on the knobbly kerb of the A470 waiting for the sudden inrush of traffic in both directions to abate. She texts him as they stand.

How did you get the castle to open?!

Sold my soul.

You haven't got one.

They don't know that.

No really how?

Really. Have to do weekend shooting pheasants in Scotland.

Christ in heaven… Shoot to miss!

Will do… The pheasants, anyway.

When they look up again they see they have missed the lull: cars and buses roar past in opposing streams, impossible. He grabs her arm and points back to the underpass, and they set off, half-running, laughing, their hands colliding softly, then pulling away.

A man in a dark-blue uniform is waiting for them outside the castle. They apologise for being a little late, and show their identity cards. That's all right, sir, says the man, looking at them both. But I'm afraid I do have to lock up at six.

That's fine, says the professor, I don't think we'll need long.