Nicola Barker - Wide Open

♦

Connie had seen him, in the distance, white-suited like an astronaut. She’d kept on walking, vaguely perplexed, but her mind was full of other things. Then she heard something. But it was so faint and far away. Like the sad cry of a curlew. A kind of wailing. Finally she saw Jim, and behind him she saw Nathan. Jim was running. But not Nathan. He walked. Connie stopped. She turned towards the salt flats. Then who…?

The white figure lay down. He rested his hands across his chest. He relaxed. Then his head, with a terrible gradualness, turned slowly, gently sideways. How many seconds passed before Jim reached him? Thirty? Forty? More? And when Jim did reach him, Connie took it as a signal to start walking again. Fast and then faster.

On her way down towards the shore she met Nathan.

“Is it Ronny?” she panted. Nathan nodded, but he didn’t pick up pace. Connie ran on and down towards the others. Jim was screaming. He’d ripped off Ronny’s white helmet and his visor. He was yanking at his head.

“What did you do? What did you do? Where are you? What did you do?”

Ronny’s eyes were closed as though he was sleeping. He did not respond to Jim’s violent admonishments. Connie fell to her knees. “Leave him!” she shouted. “Let him go!”

She pulled Ronny’s eyelids open. She saw only whites.

“What’s happened? Tell me!”

Jim was howling. “I don’t know. I don’t know. He put his hand to his mouth. I saw him put his hand to his mouth and then he lay down.”

Connie prised Ronny’s jaw open. She tried to look past his tongue. Then she placed both her hands on the outside of his neck and squeezed gently.

“I think I feel something…I think he swallowed something.”

She plunged her hand into his mouth and attempted to force her fingers down his throat.

Nathan finally reached them. He said nothing. He crouched down and took hold of Ronny’s arm but couldn’t gain access to his wrist, so he pulled the plastic suit open at the front and then ripped it across and over his shoulder, yanking up Ronny’s hand to feel for a pulse. He couldn’t locate one. He kept on trying.

“No pulse,” he said eventually, and dropped Ronny’s arm. “He’s gone,” he said.

“No!” Jim shouted. “No, he isn’t dead! No, he isn’t dead! No, he isn’t, he isn’t…”

He started shaking uncontrollably. He jumped forward and began banging his full weight on to Ronny’s diaphragm.

“He is dead,” Connie whispered, withdrawing her hand. In it she held a small, gold butter pat, still frozen. She started to cry. “Oh fuck. He is dead.”

When she’d removed her hand from his mouth, Ronny’s jaw sagged open. She tried to close it. It wouldn’t close.

“He isn’t dead,” Jim yelled again, and continued pummelling. Nathan leaned forward and calmly back-handed his face, very hard. Once, twice.

Jim gasped. He put his hands to his cheeks. He stared at his brother, dumbfounded.

“Pull the suit off,” Nathan said. “Help me.”

He yanked the suit away from Ronny’s skinny torso while the two of them watched him. The suit was already muddy. Ronny’s legs were steeped in it.

“The gold watch I gave him,” Nathan said, “is it on him anywhere?”

“The gold watch?” Jim repeated blankly.

“Is it on him?” Nathan yelled.

Jim blinked. “I don’t know. I don’t. I think he broke it.”

He began rocking.

Nathan pulled the remainder of the suit off, then placed his hands under Ronny’s armpits and yanked him out several feet further towards the sea. As he yanked, Ronny’s shoes came loose.

“What are you doing?” Jim sprang back to life again. “Leave him alone! Not his shoes! Leave him, Nathan! Leave him!”

He scrambled forwards, into the mud, grabbing one of the shoes and trying vainly to fit it back on to Ronny’s foot again. “Not his shoes! He never took off his shoes!”

“I’m saving you,” Nathan yelled, his face puce with both his rage and his exertions. “I’m saving you. Don’t you understand? Get away from here! Go away !”

Connie saw Nathan sinking up to his thighs in mud and then Ronny’s pale, limp body sliding gently into it. Jim was deep in mud himself and flailing around helplessly.

“Don’t do this,” he screamed, “just leave him. Just leave him alone. Just leave him!”

But Ronny’s body sank anyway until eventually Connie stared vainly at where it once had been because it was as if she’d only ever dreamed it there. Pieces of the suit began shifting in the wind across the flats.

“Get those, Connie,” Nathan pointed.

She found herself doing as he’d instructed. She gathered up the helmet and visor, the suit, one of the shoes. Jim still held the other.

The two brothers faced each other. No words were exchanged between them. Then Nathan turned and began wading back towards drier land. Back to his car. Back to his life. Everything is finally over, he thought thankfully, everything is dead, everything is finished. He took a long, slow, deep breath, and even as he began to exhale it, he was well on his way to forgiving himself.

♦

First she carried the cardboard box outside and placed it down gently, then she returned to her room and began piling armloads of stuff on to the counterpane of her bed. All the clothes from her cupboards and her drawers, all the crazy mementoes she’d accumulated, all her schoolbooks and folders, all her toys and her knick-knacks. Even the few posters on her walls. Then she pulled each of the four corners of the counterpane together and dragged the whole giant bundle out of the house and into the farmyard.

With a touch of disarming level-headedness, Lily positioned herself a sensible distance away from the outbuildings, the farmhouse itself and the animals. She went and grabbed a selection of logs from under the woodpile. The drier, she reasoned, the better. In the kitchen she found meths and matches.

♦

Sara awoke still clutching her aching jaw. It hurt when she moved it. She gently ground her teeth together, relishing the dart of discomfort this generated, then lay back limply, listening. All was quiet. She checked her bedside clock. She checked it again. She climbed out of bed, rather creakily and walked down the corridor. Connie’s bedroom door was ajar, her bed was unmade and empty. Lily’s door was wide open. All her things were gone. Is there something about me? Sara wondered quietly, which makes people keep on disappearing? Then she turned, clumped downstairs at full tilt and bellowed out Lily’s name into the downy silence.

♦

Lily yanked off the clothes she wore, layer by layer, until she stood naked next to the smoke and the flames.

“Look at me!” she screamed, up into the sky, straight into the heavens. “LOOK AT ME! I AM ABSOLUTELY BLOODY GORGEOUS!”

She started laughing, clutching at her ribs, then bent over and picked up the cardboard box. The fire was burning fiercely. The wind was blustering and changing direction. One moment the smoke flew one way, the next, the other. Lily inhaled some of it and began coughing. Through her tears she saw the farmhouse door opening. Through the flames she espied her mother. She whooped with glee, sprang into the air, threw the box on to the blistering fire and then with a final spectacularly unholy yodel, she turned on her dirty heels and ran.

♦

Nathan had gone. Neither Connie nor Jim had moved an inch. They each clutched one of Ronny’s shoes. Eventually Connie held out her hand to him. “Come back,” she said, “get out of that mud.”

“Death is my gift,” Jim whispered hoarsely, not moving. “Don’t you see? Death is all I ever bring.”

“He swallowed a butter pat,” Connie said, refusing to acknowledge Jim’s declaration, opening her hand to show him the little gold packet. “Isn’t that funny?”