The Other Half of My Heart (27 page)

He can, with a great deal of effort, swing himself from wheelchair to car seat and fold his wheelchair up. He refuses to let Fred help, although he does allow him to put the chair into the boot when it's folded. So he travels back to Missingham in the back seat of the car, the way he did when he was a child, and he tries not to think about that. He closes his eyes for the bend in the road where the Cosworth was sent flying through the hedge. He notices that his parents stop talking when they go round it, and wonders whether they do that every time. He feels sick.

‘Can we stop at Tina's?' Roddy asks. His parents look at each other.

‘Howard says that they aren't coping very well,' Fran says, as though that's an answer. ‘Alice is – well, “unrecognizable” is the word Howard uses.'

‘Best leave it, son,' Fred says.

Roddy says, ‘I'm not really asking. I said I would go to see her when I got back. I promised.'

‘We could get you home first,' Fran says, ‘so you can see everything.' Roddy has refused a phased return to home life. He's managed in one of the independent-living units in rehab, and the converted barn that he's going home to has been designed with him in mind. He's sick of feeling like an invalid, he says, and he's not going to behave like one.

‘Mum,' Roddy says, ‘I told her that I would go when I got back. I need to see her. I have to keep my promise.'

And so without another word Fred drives them down through the village, past the Green Dragon and the small row of shops, and into the estate where the Randolphs live. Fran has seen Howard, from time to time. He's come up to the farmhouse and looked at Roddy's new home, watched the horses and the grooms who look away when they realize who he is. He's sat at the kitchen table and told Fran that things are ‘difficult' and he's afraid that Alice is ‘isolated' and that all of her sparkle and joy has gone. She's given up her job and she sits in the house, looking out of the window. As time has passed he's said he doesn't know how to help her. He's cried. And when Fran has asked about Tina he's just shaken his head and said, I don't know, Fran. She's quiet. She doesn't complain but she hardly goes out. She tries to talk about Sam sometimes but she can't get very far. I've stopped asking her about work, about seeing you, because all she says is that it would be better if she'd never come here in the first place. Alice will come round, Fran had said. She's had a terrible blow. It will take time. But Howard had said, bleakly, that when Alice played Martha in
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
she kept up a Midwest accent for the whole of the rehearsal period, at home, at work and in her sleep. She's a determined woman, Fran, he'd added, and she's always had her way.

It's as slow a process for Roddy to get out of the car as it is to get in. Howard sees him first. He tends to sit in the living room, which looks out over the small front garden, while Alice prefers the kitchen table, the view across the back garden, watching the birds come and go. He goes to find Tina, who is in the kitchen, measuring out flour for the bread she's recently started to bake again. He puts his hand on her arm, inclines his head, and says softly, ‘There's a visitor for you, Bettina.'

He'd hoped that Alice wouldn't notice – sometimes she dozes in the afternoon – but her head snaps round to look at them. ‘Who is it?'

‘It's the Floods,' Howard says gently, ‘it's Roddy. Now, Alice—'

But Alice is up and out of her chair, Tina behind her, as they go to the living-room window. Tina's heart is swelling as her stomach tightens, as though space is being reallocated in her trunk. She's thought of this moment, often. She's thought about texting Roddy, too, but she hasn't known what she could say, apart from more apologies. One thing that she did know was that as soon as she started a conversation with him, he would want to know what they were going to do, and how they were going to progress. He would want them to make a new life. Tina still has no idea whether this is going to be possible. Her heart is like a dead thing most of the time, and when it does come to life it is with spasms that are unbearable, as she thinks about how she had distracted Roddy at the worst possible moment. And because of that, because of her, Sam was gone and Roddy's career, his passion, his easy loping stride were all gone too.

Roddy negotiates the kerb, the gate, and wheels himself down the path, Fran and Fred following. Alice is all narrow-eyed silence, her breathing as tight as a drum. Howard's hand is on Tina's shoulder. Tina is drinking him in. Roddy is just as handsome, although his mouth is twisting in concentration rather than a smile, his chest looks broader and the long, lean arm muscles that developed over years of working with horses have been replaced by bulk and obvious strength.

The sound of the doorbell rouses them. Howard moves towards the door, and Tina follows. Just as Howard has his hand on the latch Alice takes Tina's arm, a grip rather than a hold. Her nails are sharp.

‘You're not going to talk to him.' It's a command, not a question. Tina looks from her mother to her father. The door is open an inch.

‘Now, Alice—' Howard says.

‘Don't you “now Alice” me,' she replies, her voice low and full of fury.

‘Tina?' Roddy's voice. It makes Tina shudder, and thrill. Howard opens the door. Alice takes a step back, as though the sight of Roddy has physically hurt her. She's still holding Tina's arm, and Tina, who still needs to concentrate in order to balance properly, stumbles away from the door with her.

‘Tina,' Roddy says, ‘I'm back. I said I'd come.'

‘Is Sam with you?' Alice asks, her voice made of knives.

Fred opens his mouth, closes it. Fran puts her hand on Roddy's shoulder, and Howard turns to his wife: ‘Alice. No.'

‘Mum,' Tina says, ‘I think Roddy and I need to talk.' Roddy's face lights at her words. He puts out a hand, as though he's waiting to guide her over a gangplank. She moves towards the doorway, thinks: I can step outside, I can close the door, I can talk to him. I can touch his face. But Alice's grip is tightening. She swings her daughter towards her.

‘Have you no loyalty?' she asks. ‘Have you no heart?'

‘Alice,' Fran's voice this time, ‘Alice, no. Please.'

Alice continues as though she hasn't heard anything. ‘He is the man who killed your brother. He has ruined our lives. You owe him nothing.'

Tina, her back to the Floods now as she faces her mother, can hear someone crying. It might be Fran, or her father. She tries to pull away from Alice, but her mother is holding her, hard, with her hand but also with the unblinking look in her eyes, the cold pleading of her voice.

‘Are you so blinded by their money and their charm that you'll walk over your own brother's grave to get to them?'

‘Mum—' Tina is crying. Her mother is dry-eyed. She lets go of her daughter's arm, steps past her, and stands in the doorway. She looks at each of the Floods in turn: Fred, Fran, Roddy. Howard puts his arm on Alice's shoulder but she shakes it off. For a horrible moment Tina thinks that her mother is going to spit in Roddy's face.

But all she does is say, clearly and slowly, in the same measured way: ‘Do not come to this house again. Do not contact my daughter again. You people have done enough damage and you should be ashamed to show your faces here.'

And she closes the door.

‘I'll be waiting, Tina,' Roddy calls through the closed door. He doesn't know whether she hears.

Over time, conversations no longer stop when Roddy enters a room and he ceases to be the centre of attention, although when Aurora goes to the Olympics and comes back with a medal people start to ask him how he is more often. He says he doesn't need the Olympic Games to remind him that he's not a world-class showjumper any more. He means for it to come out cheerfully but he knows it sounds sour.

He's as better as he'll ever get, although he tries not to think of it as better, and tries not to imagine the able-bodied Roddy standing behind him, limbs effortless and unthinking.

The depression comes, of course. Years three to five after the accident are grim. By then his life has been neatly resected and rewritten into Before the Accident and After the Accident, although Roddy talks about BW and AW, Before Wheels and After Wheels. He is living in his lovingly, expensively remodelled barn, the doorways and corridors broad, the surfaces low, the ceilings high and full of skylights.

People who know him well have stopped looking at him with what he calls the ‘brave Roddy faces' and treat him as himself. He rides, with the help of a modified saddle, and he races a carriage, something that he enjoys more than he ever would have thought he could, although his competitive spirit has gone. He drives a modified car, although he doesn't enjoy that as much. He says to himself that it's because he's no longer behind the wheel of his beloved Cosworth but admits, sometimes, as he takes a corner too slowly or pulls into his driveway too fast in his desperation to be out of the car, that he's afraid of the wretched thing. He buys a new pair of cowboy boots every year, even though the old ones never wear out.

And he starts to realize a few things. Now that he doesn't need to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of every day, and his upper body is as strong as it's going to be, he cannot ignore the atrophy of his legs. With his life as easy as a determinedly positive attitude and insurance company money can make it, he has the energy again to look around and ahead. And raising his eyes brings on the deep misery that people have only recently stopped watching him for and warning him about.

When Roddy looks forward he sees nothing different. He doesn't want to compete – the desire to be better than other people left him on the day that he proved so conclusively, to himself, that he wasn't, by hurting the woman he loved, first in her own body and secondly by taking Sam from her. And, after three years of being forced to give her time and space – though he would rather find her, see her, and see whether there's really nothing more to be said – Roddy starts to think that perhaps Tina won't come back. He has heard that she has moved to France and her parents have moved, too. He couldn't blame them. He thought he saw them, sometimes, when he looked down to the graveyard. Sometimes he takes out his photographs of himself and Tina and looks at them, for hours. On other days he is tempted to throw the photos away, sell Snowdrop and go away himself. He could take up the standing offer he has from the Fieldens to go and work with them, or move to a city and see if he could be Roddy Flood without the horses. But he knew that it wouldn't make a difference. Not really.

One night, Fran pops in when the photographs are out. She looks them over, looks at his face, puts her hand on his and says, ‘I hate to say this, Roddy, but Tina knows where you are, and she always has. She would come back if she could.' They've never talked much about what Alice said that day, but they all remember it. Roddy had a text message from Tina on the evening of her mother's outburst. It had read, ‘I'm sorry.' He'd thought she had been apologizing for her mother. ‘It's understandable,' he had replied, ‘let's meet.' But there had never been a response. So maybe what she was saying sorry for was the endless silence to come.

The next day, he starts to flirt with one of the newer grooms, and within two weeks he takes her to bed. It's the first time since the accident. He knows that he's doing it for the wrong reasons, but he doesn't care. It isn't for liking the girl, or even for wanting the sex, but in the hope that, where patience had failed with Tina, giving up – the appearance of giving up – might work in this warped universe.

Roddy's days become as dark as his nights. He feels the outside of himself hardening, like leather left in the sun. He forces himself to sound and act like himself, so that he keeps on being the man he wants to be, on the outside, at least. But the inside of him feels hollow and cold. His heart has become like his legs, something he can stick a knife into and feel nothing.

He had only done this once, and not with violence but with cool fascination. He'd taken his penknife into the shower room with him, on the cord he usually wore it on round his neck. After he'd moved himself into his shower seat and washed himself, he'd pulled out the sharpest blade – which he knew wasn't very sharp at all – and pressed it against the taut skin at the side of his knee, where it bent. He had to press hard before blood appeared at the metal tip. He took the blade away, and felt nothing. He rubbed soap over the tiny cut, and felt nothing. He sat there for a long time, letting the water chase the seepage of blood down his leg, and he thought of Tina, sitting on his bed, fresh from the shower, on one of the many mornings where such a thing was ordinary. Him saying, you've cut yourself, your leg. And her, twisting her body around to see the back of her calf, saying, I didn't even feel myself do it.

 

RUFUS LOOKS BETTINA
up. It takes him a while to find the right places. He starts by trying to find online references to Tina Randolph, but there are numerous Tina Randolphs, and when he thinks of what else he knows about Bettina, he discovers that there isn't a lot to go on. A dead brother, some time in France, although he isn't sure whether she was still Tina Randolph or whether she was Bettina May by then. Of course the internet is loaded with Tinas, travels and small tragedies. It's only when he adds ‘Flood horses' to the search that it all starts to come into focus, and make horrible sense.

1998. Kate was seven. Rufus was working long hours and quietly resenting Richenda's carping and complaints. Mealtimes were sullen. Kate was bright and sweet but didn't look much like the marriage-saving gift that Rufus had hoped she might be. He had just set up on his own and business was slow. He and Richenda bickered and point-scored, so Rufus had felt as though he was not so much walking on eggshells as crossing a minefield covered in the things. Newspaper reports about an accident in another county in which a young man was killed and two other people seriously injured had barely registered in the Micklethwaite household at the time.