Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

Ilse passed the phone to Kim, who shouted into it, ‘When you see three missed calls, you might want to try calling right back.’

‘I was about to!’

And there they went, Ilse thought, exchanging an exasperated glance with Hiroko who just said, ‘Love to him and Raza,’ before slipping away to the kitchen.

‘I hate this,’ Kim said, after hanging up the phone. She rested her head on Ilse’s shoulder, but lightly, aware how frail the old woman’s bones were. ‘I hate that it felt familiar, trying to get hold of him. Those hours I couldn’t get through to you on 9/11. ’

‘It was minutes, not hours,’ Ilse said. ‘Look, your skin is so young compared to mine we could be creatures from different species.’ She rested her hand on Kim’s, gently patting it.

‘I just want the world to be as it was.’ Ilse said nothing, just carried on patting her hand. Only with Gran was it possible to be this way, to feel herself sinking into peace. Her father would have responded with some CIA-style political analysis about shifting geopolitical trends. And — worse — her mother with her cod psychology would be saying, ‘Now, Kim, darling, you know this is bringing up those suppressed feelings of loss and vulnerability around your father and my divorce. I know you chose this profession of yours because in some way you’re trying to atone for what you see as your own inability to hold our marriage together. So when anything threatens to collapse or crumble it brings back that sense of personal failure you felt when the marriage broke up.’ And she always emphasised the words ‘broke up’ as though they conclusively proved her point that Kim’s passion for engineering was really all about her.

‘I’ve lived through Hitler, Stalin, the Cold War, the British Empire, segregation, apartheid, God knows what. The world will survive this, and with just a tiny bit of luck so will everyone you love. But it is entirely possible you’ll need some kind of holiday before that happens.’ Ilse rapped Kim’s hand firmly at the final sentence. Kim had said she was only coming to New York for a meeting about ironing out details of her relocation and would be on vacation after that until the Christmas holidays ended, but somehow she’d ended up working on a project out of the New York office instead.

Kim made a non-committal noise deep in her throat.

‘I don’t know how I managed to never worry about Dad all those years he was with the CIA. But now—’ She stopped as Ilse pinched her and gestured her head towards the kitchen where their voices might easily travel. They had never spoken of it, but silently both had agreed on a pact to allow Hiroko to continue believing Raza and Harry’s euphemisms about administrative work in security. Lowering her voice she said, ‘Everything in the world is so scary, nothing more than the thought of where he might be, what he’s doing. I’m frightened all the time, all the time. And I hate it. It must make me so amazingly tedious to be around.’

‘Your conversation has been somewhat limited of late,’ Ilse said. ‘Sometimes I wish I had been in London during the war simply so I could pull you up with stories of the spirit of the Blitz.’

‘Oh, don’t beat yourself up over it. It wouldn’t have worked.’ She gave her grandmother a resounding kiss on the cheek.

‘I mean what I said about the holiday.’ Ilse spoke with that voice of gravity which she only brought out when she was very seriously concerned about Kim.

‘I know you mean it. But right now, I need some place to go at least five days a week where I feel a sense of control.’

Ilse, who knew her granddaughter far better than either of Kim’s parents did, had long ago recognised it was the need for control rather than atonement for her inability to hold together a marriage at the age of four which had drawn her into the profession she’d chosen. She still remembered the expression of fierce accomplishment — almost defiance — on Kim’s face the day she came home from university for her winter holidays and said, ‘I know how to make a building earthquake-proof.’ Earthquake-proof! As if there was anything to be done in defence if the world opened up beneath you.

Poor Gary! Ilse found herself thinking in unexpectedly sympathetic terms about the man who she’d never thought good enough for her granddaughter. Kim had only chosen him to begin with because she knew he’d never make her feel uncontrolled. She had enough of that around her father — had always wanted to summon up indifference to both his absences and his presence, and grew so enraged when everything but indifference was what she felt. And, of course, she’d always ultimately break up with the Garys of the world simply because her basic nature was too passionate to settle for someone towards whom she could feel so completely lukewarm. One day, Ilse thought, one day someone will come along and knock her sideways. It will either be the best or the worst thing of her life.

‘What were you and Hiroko talking about before I whirled in like a banshee?’ Kim had kicked off her boots and curled up on the sofa, her body pliant with relief now that Harry was OK.

‘The “Willie in the kitchen” story.’ Ilse laughed.

‘If there is a heaven, Uncle Willie will be glaring down at you from it,’ Kim said, shaking her head as if disapproving, though Ilse knew Kim loved this bawdy side to her, and would often encourage her to say the most outrageous things with a single smile or glimmer of the eye.

‘Nonsense. If there is a heaven, Willie is doing exactly what he was doing in the kitchen. Otherwise it’s not heaven. Not for Willie.’ Suddenly she cackled. ‘Imagine if those suicide bombers end up in Willie’s heaven. Imagine the looks on their faces.’

‘Gran, that isn’t funny.’

‘It’s hilarious! Hiroko, isn’t it hilarious?’

Hiroko, re-entering the room, handed Kim a cup of something steaming-hot.

‘When I knew her first, she was very well behaved. I promise you, she was.’

Ilse’s laughter was clear and unconstrained — the laugh of a woman who knew how fortunate she had been to get a second life.

It was this laughter that Hiroko thought of some days later, when Kim was back in Seattle packing up her life to move it to New York, and Ilse didn’t respond when Hiroko rapped sharply on her bedroom door and asked her how long she was going to go on sleeping. She thought of the laughter even before she opened the door to receive confirmation of what she already knew to be true.

Pushing the hair away from her old friend’s tranquil face, she thought, It can happen like this, too. Not just scales and shadows and bullet wounds, but peace is also possible at the end.

She picked up the phone from Ilse’s bedside and called Raza’s satphone. When he answered, his voice distracted at first but instantly snapping into concern as he heard the tone of her voice, she said, ‘Raza-chan, you need to be Harry’s support today. Ilse has died in her sleep.’ When he was finally assured that she was not about to fall apart and didn’t need him to phone anyone in New York to come over and hold her hand she hung up and sat with Ilse for a few minutes more, crying with sorrow but not despair.

Then she drew a deep breath, asked any part of Ilse’s spirit still lingering in the room to give her strength to do the unbearable, and called Kim to say her grandmother was dead.

Harry Burton walked through the bright winter morning, jet lag and sorrow colliding to make everything in New York seem a little off-kilter. He had expected to come back and find the city as he’d last seen it near the end of September with a great pall downtown, survivor’s unease uptown, but instead he found an ongoing collision between the city’s forward-strutting nature and the demands of tragedy which insisted grief must be held on to like a dying lover.