Graham Joyce - The Silent Land

She was uncertain how long she’d watched the moon, but after a while, without any sign of movement or sense of time passing it seemed to have retreated, and faded; withdrawing to a condition of ordinary beauty.

She went back to her bed and lay down, still watching through the window, and eventually she drifted back to sleep.

In the morning over breakfast, while they were both getting ready for work she started to tell Jake what she’d seen.

‘You should have woken me.’

‘Yes. Now I’ll never know if I dreamed it.’

He was about to answer when the telephone rang. It was Eric, Archie’s friend, calling from Tunisia. ‘Zoe, my love, I want you to be sitting down.’

When he said that she already knew everything.

‘I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.’

‘When?’

‘Bill and I missed him at breakfast, so we went up to his room.’

‘I see.’

‘I want you to know how happy he was last night. How happy. We’d been to a tea dance in the afternoon. He didn’t stop giggling. We danced with all these lovely ladies. Then in the evening we had a lovely dinner and we drank some wine and after that we went for a stroll along the seafront. The moon was incredible last night. Beautiful.’

‘I know.’

‘Archie was dancing. He was whisking an imaginary partner along the promenade. He wasn’t drunk, you know your dad. But he kept saying look at the moon, look at the moon, lads! Are you there, my darling? Are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Look at the moon, he said. I’ve never seen your dad so happy, my darling. Bill said the same. He was a lovely man, was Archie. A lovely man. I’m so sorry.’

‘Couldn’t help himself,’ Zoe said. ‘Had to come visit me despite himself.’

‘What’s that, darling?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I had to call you. He was a wonder to us. Are you there, sweetheart?’

Jake, who was watching her face when the tears started rolling, took the phone from her and held her hand as he continued the conversation with Eric, very softly.

Eric and Bill had insisted on taking care of everything. Archie’s insurance was up to date and they dealt with the officials and the paperwork and had Archie flown back in a zinc-lined coffin, as per the regulations. Archie’s remains were cremated at the local cemetery. He had a Humanist service.

Zoe left the Christmas tree in his bungalow until Twelfth Night, according to the tradition. Then she carefully packed away all the hanging mementos. She made charity bags of his decent clothes and asked Eric and Bill to take what they wanted of his equipment. She kept a few things for herself and gave them Archie’s bowls to pass on to someone at the club.

Eric asked her about something she’d said on the morning he had phoned her from Tunisia. ‘You said he had come back to you, despite himself. What did you mean?’

So she told them the story of the moon. Eric and Bill both looked at her with shining eyes, and said nothing.

Zoe took the box of Christmas tree tokens and souvenirs so that she and Jake could continue the tradition of decorating theirs with luminous memories. She went out and bought a silver-moon disc to commemorate Archie’s passing and all those years afterwards, whenever her eyes fell upon it as it hung from the tree, it never once made her sad.

The wind had died down and the entire resort had a scraped look, as if raked clean by a giant claw. Loose snow had been swept and piled high against doors and apartment blocks; parked cars had been shaved of ice and snow on their windward sides; and the entire village seemed to have been blown back at a minute angle, only now emerging to blink in surprise at the morning sun.

Every cloud had been chased from a sky rendered the thrilling lapis lazuli of a Pharaoh’s death mask. The early-morning sun had been reborn white-gold.

‘Today is the last day that I intend to ski,’ Jake declared.

‘Oh?’

‘It’s stunning. These are perfect ski conditions. We will never get another day like this. I want to finish on this high.’

‘Why do you need to finish at all?’ There was a slight tremor in Zoe’s voice, one which she couldn’t hold back. It was as if Jake was declaring a loss of faith in some religion. ‘Why not ski while we can?’

‘I think our time is limited. I can’t tell you why. I just sense it. And I’ve stopped enjoying it.’

Zoe didn’t argue. Jake seemed resigned. But she didn’t believe it; couldn’t believe it. This was not the end. He had been into the kitchen that morning and had reported that the beef on the stainless steel worktop was beginning to smell. His clock was running. But she, after all, was running an anti-clock in her belly.

She was still testing regularly, and in every case the test was positive. The baby was still alive inside her and she knew, in a way that required no test, that it was thriving. It might be no bigger than a fingernail, a crescent moon in a vast night sky, but she felt it drawing on her, feeding on her every heartbeat. While it was growing, while it was quickening—and she didn’t care how old the foetus was because she felt the tapping of a butterfly’s wing no doctor would ever convince her was gas or stomach pains—this could not be the end for them.

She wanted to shout this to Jake but didn’t have the strength. It just seemed absurd to philosophise about their predicament. She couldn’t accept that this ‘death’ was to be one long debate. She knew that this baby was alive inside her and that it would come to term. She didn’t know what would happen at that moment. It was just unimaginable to be in death and pregnant at the same time. Unless Jake were correct, and they were all the twisted offspring of some marriage between physics and dreaming.

Jake had gone out of the hotel to put on his skis. Zoe clumped across the lobby behind him. As she crossed the lobby she dropped one of her ski gauntlets and bent down to pick it up.

As she did so she heard the unmistakable sneeze of the air brakes of a luxury bus, and as she straightened up, glove in hand, she almost dropped it a second time. There was the bus parked outside the hotel, and the lobby was thronged with chattering people all over again. The babble of their voices filled the air. Zoe could feel the warmth from their bodies as they crowded the lobby space and they all spoke with great animation.

She turned back to face the reception desk and the same three women were in place, in their smart hotel uniforms, each engaged in exactly the same activities as when she had first seen them. The young woman with the ponytail had the phone pressed to her ear. The lady with the auburn hair and black glasses was processing a credit card, and the third receptionist struggled to hear what her grey-suited manager was trying to say above the racket.

The people were mostly dressed in ski gear, apart from the arrivals coming in trailing their suitcases-on-wheels. Though she was standing in a different part of the lobby, the same man came by and winked at her. She caught a whiff of his cologne all over again. She had to check to make sure she wasn’t wearing her towelling robe as before, but no, she was properly equipped with ski gear this time. She turned to the reception. There were the two English women talking about an avalanche.

Zoe felt her breath coming short. She looked out through the glass doors to see if there was any sign of Jake. But there were so many people thronging the lobby, and both they and the newly arrived bus obscured her view of the road outside.

Bewildered, she was about to turn to speak to the two English women at the reception desk, but at that moment the concierge at his blond-wood desk happened to look up and catch her eye. He raised his eyebrows quizzically, and then opened his eyes wide, as if suddenly remembering something. ‘Madam!’ he called to her. ‘Madam!’ He raised an arm high, fluttering his fingers at Zoe in a come-hither motion.