Sarah Hall - The Beautiful Indifference - Stories

They lay for a time on the grass behind the cathedral, under the branches of a rustling beech, in reticulated sunlight. She lay with her head on his arm. They kissed, murmured to each other. They were lovers. She found herself counting the hours before his train back. After seeing him off she would drive north. Often the hours before parting were more difficult than the parting itself. He would quieten, and she would feel strangely enlivened, sheer, as if walking close to an edge. She watched the beech leaves flicker and interrupt the sky. She remembered then, something from the article about prostheses. That muscle had its own memory system. That consciously thinking about moving the attached arm, or the leg, would not move it. Those with new limbs needed to become unconcerned about articulation. They simply needed to let the body behave. She told him this. He had not read the article. He said that he would.

I had to help amputate a leg, during my surgical rotation.

Christ! I can’t even imagine doing such a thing.

The vascular surgeon took care of most of it. I just went through the bone. There were problems with the other leg. The patient died.

She lifted her head a fraction and turned to look at him. His eyes were open, staring straight up. She could see through the clear blue yolk of the nearest iris.

That’s terrible.

It wasn’t really the team’s fault. These things happen.

He rolled his head towards her. In the sunlight they looked at each other brightly.

What you do, she said, it’s amazing. I couldn’t do it.

You’d surprise yourself.

No.

He gathered her in. The heat and smell and closeness of him was peculiarly surrounding, amniotic. Something opened in her belly, like a flower carved from air. She thought about the railway station, with its cyclonic roof, the moment when she would step back, the carriage door would beep and close, and the train would pulse as the engine engaged. Her throat began to constrict. She rose out of his embrace. She reached in her bag for a tablet and swallowed it dry.

I think my hangover’s coming back. Might have to fight fire with fire. Drink?

Yeah, great. Let’s go to one of the places on the river.

There was a small crowd outside the Minster when they rounded the corner. People were sitting on the steps, queuing outside the stall. At first it looked like a stunt, the horse hammering down the street, the empty carriage swerving behind, and the driver half standing, the reins gripped in his fists. The driver was calling to the horse, whoa, whoa, in a tone of irrefutable stewardship, but something was wrong. She took his arm and pointed. The white shire kicked on, coming towards the crowd, its hooves ringing heavily on the tarmac. It kept coming. The weight of the beast. Its breast working like a machine. Its fore and hind legs riving. Thirty feet from them the horse cut between two bollards and as the carriage hit tore out of its tack. There was the sick sound of brass and wood splintering. The driver flipped from his seat like an unbolted piece and landed lengths ahead. The shire kicked away, its reins trailing, its eye white-cupped and livid. It passed her at the exact moment she thought about stepping out with her arms held up. She felt its wake.

He had already broken from the crowd and was running towards the injured man. He was almost to him when she looked over. She hadn’t seen him run before. For every human the action is never as imagined. Then he was kneeling, going to work. His back was to her. She couldn’t see what he was doing. Checking the neck perhaps, or the head. The wrists, which had been held out like frail instruments to break the man’s fall. His head turned slightly. He was talking as he ministered to the man, asking questions, or issuing instructions. Others began to arrive and cluster round, and her view of him was obscured.

She looked down the street after the horse but it had kept going and was gone. Spectators were walking purposefully towards the scene of the accident. They passed her, their faces set in expressions of shock and disbelief. Still she did not move. She looked after the horse. How real it had seemed, a truly designed thing. Someone would have to catch it before it damaged itself. She took a few steps, as if to follow, then turned and came slowly towards the glut of people. A woman was trying to steward, to move everyone back.

Give him some air. Come on.

Within minutes a medical vehicle arrived and two jacketed paramedics made their way into the fray, one carrying a grey case. The bole of onlookers expanded and thinned. Information was passed between people. She heard talk of the horse having been hit by a taxi, or being spooked by a horn. She saw him. He was standing back, letting the paramedics work. The driver lay on his side, unmoving, then moving economically, but not his lower half. She did not approach. The paramedics stepped in and out, knelt and rose. He was walking towards her when someone in the crowd pointed over and a paramedic called him back. There was a consultation, or he was being thanked. He had been born the year she’d left home. That seemed impossible.

When they regained each other she embraced him. She did not know what else to do. The emotion was like fear, or the abating of fear, and it overtook her and made her grip the back of his shirt. She released him and he gave a brief report. The driver had probably broken a hip. There were bad abrasions. There was no trauma to the head. But he seemed not to care about his injuries. All he had kept asking was whether the horse was hurt.

She drove back across the Pennines. On the moorland the bracken was beginning to regenerate. Tight green spirals were coming up through the sea of dead stalks. The curled fronds looked ovarian. Like the illustration of these organs they had shown her to explain. Now the word and the picture and the bracken were the same somehow. She entered a belt of cloud. The light became more complicated, dense, unfiltered, west coast light. Her phone on the dashboard had chimed and was flashing. He always texted afterwards, to thank her. She would reply similarly. Then they would wait a few days before contacting each other again. She had begun to bleed, lightly. She could feel the intimate transit of fluid. The reassurance this sensation had once provided was fading. There was no meaning to it. She did not want to go back to the house yet and so she took a turning off the main road, south, towards her friend. She could call in without notice. The child meant they were rarely out, and it was not too late. She felt like telling her friend that it was wrong of her to have said the things she had. She was not deferring the hard things in life. Her friend was privileged and she did not know it. The assumptions were careless and because they were careless they were also cruel. She pictured a harsh exchange between them, bitter revelations, a dramatic exit.

But she knew she was not really angry with her friend. There was no point in trying to ground her frustration. No one was to blame. Retaliation would be unfair. She turned off the road again, this time onto a small country lane. She parked in a gravel lay-by and looked up at the hills. On the slopes the previous year’s bracken was rust-coloured and collapsing, the fresh underlay was taking hold. With all the talk of carcinogens they did not burn it back as often as they used to. She had not smelled that fragrance in a long time. It would be dark soon. She knew she should visit her father, who did not live far away. But his endless hope would be too wearing. The cottage would be thick with dust and newspapers, unrinsed bottles. It would smell of mould and be full of loss. In her purse were the white boxes. After she had left the train station she had bought three packets of painkillers, from different pharmacies. It had been easy. Her mother had been the same age.