Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

They land twenty-four kilometres northwest of Baikonur. The re-entry capsule is not made for a tiny child. In the last twenty minutes of descent she sits him on her lap and straps the two of them together with loop after loop of electrical tape. He screams and struggles. They will experience 4G when they hit the ground. They’ve been living in microgravity for a year and a half. Already she can feel her body becoming heavy. She uses the last of the tape to fix the baby’s head to her chest so that his neck doesn’t snap. She can do nothing about the effect of the impact on his brain.

The noise and the vibration are now indescribable. Is something wrong? She finds it hard to believe that this is how it is meant to be. There is a double crunch, audible even above the roaring, and the craft bucks violently as the two red-hot heat shields are jettisoned and appear briefly in the tiny window before ripping away to burn up above them. There is a bang. It is like jumping from a roof and hitting concrete. She thinks they have hit the ground but it is only the parachute opening. In the final second the touchdown rockets go off under the capsule to soften the landing. Again she thinks she has hit the ground. Then they hit the ground. She blacks out.

When she comes round she has no idea where she is. She can hear a child crying. She doesn’t understand why her arms are so heavy. The child is strapped to her chest. She wants to release him but she needs to cut the tape so as not to rip his hair out. She remembers that there is a knife in one of her trouser pockets. She twists her head to reach it but knows immediately that she has broken her neck. She gently rotates her head back to its original position.

She must lie perfectly still. The child is screaming. She says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Someone will come and help us.”

But someone does not come. Out of the corner of her eye she can see a triangle of colourless sky through sooty glass. They are on land and it is daytime. That is all she knows. She can’t even be sure what country she is in. After all that she has survived, after so many deaths, after the hundreds of millions of kilometres it seems possible that she may die after taking the very last step of the journey.

The child is weakening, his cries getting quieter and quieter. Perhaps he is the one who will survive. If she could give her own life in order for that to happen she would do it willingly.

And then they come. First the thundering purr of helicopters, then the rumble of the big amphibious trucks. Doors banging, footsteps and dull voices outside in Russian and English. They call her name. She is meant to have opened the hatch from the inside so they will have to cut the seals. She sees the sparkfall of oxyacetylene torches beyond the glass.

The door falls away and the smells roll in. Dust and grass and exhaust fumes — and it is this which makes her weep. There are faces above her. She holds up her hand. “Stop. My neck is broken.” A plastic collar moulded for precisely this eventuality is slipped around her neck and locked into place. Someone is cutting the child free. A scoop is slid down the back of her seat and she is lifted gently out of the capsule.

The light and the noise and the sheer scale of the world are shocking. Cameras flash and radios crackle. There are so many people. The child is being carried alongside her. He is completely limp. Then she sees him scrunching his eyes against the light. He is alive. It is the gravity which is holding him down.

There are too many things around her changing too quickly. Everything inside her body feels wrong. Her head aches and spins. She vomits. Someone wipes her with a wet cloth. The paramedics carry her up the ramp into the nearest amphibious vehicle. The scoop is locked down and the engine starts up. She reaches out and holds the child’s hand.

It is strange to be travelling so slowly over this bumpy ground after the silent glide of space. People are talking to her but she doesn’t have the energy to respond. They find an unmetalled road and the bumping softens. Later there is tarmac under the wheels and the low singing of the big rubber tyres. Her head is fixed in one position. She can’t see a window. She can feel the weight of her tongue, her feet, her hands, her intestines. A doctor slides a needle into her arm and attaches a cannula.

The truck slows and turns into the Cosmodrome.

She assumes at first that she is dreaming.

“Clare…?”

Even when she opens her eyes it takes some time before she trusts what she is seeing. He has a beard now, trim, black. He has put on a little weight but it gives him an authority he didn’t have before.

“Peter?” He squeezes her hand. “You waited for me.”

She lies in bed for two days. She eats chicken soup and scrambled egg. The nausea recedes and she is able to sit up. The child sits in a car seat with sheepskin under him to prevent him getting pressure sores. As often as she can she lifts him out and holds him under his arms and puts his feet on the floor and bounces him up and down. He seems unsure what to do with his legs.

Peter stays in Hotel Tsentralnaya in Baikonur. The shower doesn’t work and the restaurant is closed.

She lifts little weights. She walks to the other side of the room and back. She eats lamb and bread. She drinks a glass of wine. She sits outside in the sun for ten minutes, for twenty minutes. The sky makes her agoraphobic. She loves wind. She loves rain. She meets journalists. They are allowed to ask only certain questions and cannot stay for longer than fifteen minutes. She has her photograph taken holding the child. He is not walking. He seems to be in pain. But he is alive and they are together and there was a time when she dared not hope for these things.

Peter comes in every day for an hour. He holds Michael in his arms. He seems unconcerned that this is another man’s child. His generosity overwhelms her. She does not deserve this.

They fly to Moscow on a military Antonov. There are more interviews at the airport. She says, “There are some things I cannot talk about.” She says, “More than anything I would like to be left alone.” She says, “Death, you are no different to me than my lover with your cloud-coloured skin, and your hair a mass of dark cloud.” They say, “You must understand that Miss Hogg is still very tired. I’m afraid that we must end the interview now.”

She cuts her hair and dyes it blonde. She buys a summer dress. She has not worn one since she was a girl.

They fly to Munich. The child is still not walking. It will take time. They hire a silver BMW and drive south on the E52 towards Salzburg, the Bavarian Alps rising in front of them. They turn north after crossing the Inn. Cresting the hill, the lake catches her by surprise, ten kilometres of cold blue light and a flock of sails all tilted at the same angle.

A sign beside the road says STILLER AM SIMSSEE.

They drive through the centre of the town. There are cobbles and awnings. There is the Hotel Möwe am See and the Westernacher Gästehaus. A whole skinned pig hangs outside a butcher’s shop. They take Rasthausstraße down to the water’s edge and follow the curve of the shore. Peter pulls up outside a small block of apartments facing the water. White walls, balconies in chocolate-coloured wood and a roof like a black hat four sizes too large.