But she did not feel that Tony had lived a candy-filled life. ‘It was not a tunnel, it was a lake,’ she told him. ‘A great lake of shimmering coloured light.’
She had never told a guest this before. She had told Yao about it, but not Delilah. As Tony ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, considering her words, Masha saw again that incredible lake of colour: scarlet, turquoise, lemon. She hadn’t just seen that lake, she had experienced it with all her senses: she had breathed it, heard it, smelled it, tasted it.
‘Did you see . . . loved ones?’ asked Tony.
‘No,’ lied Masha, even as she saw an image of a young man walking towards her through the lake of light, colour streaming off him like water.
Such an ordinary but exquisite young man. He wore a baseball cap, like so many young men did. He took it off and scratched his head. She had only ever seen him as her baby, her beautiful fat-cheeked toothless baby, but she knew immediately that this was her son, this was the man he would have and should have become, and all that love was still within her, as fresh and powerful and shocking as it had been when she’d held him for the first time. She did not know if it had been a precious gift or a cruel punishment to have experienced that love again. Perhaps it was both.
She saw her son for what could have been a lifetime, or what could have been a few seconds. She had no concept of time. And then he was gone, and she floated near her office ceiling, above the two men working on her lifeless body. She could see a button on the floor where they had ripped open her silk shirt. She could see one of her legs splayed at a strange angle, as if she’d landed there after falling from a great height. She could see the top of another young man’s head, the white part in his dark hair revealing a tiny strawberry-shaped birthmark, the dampness of his forehead as he sent electrical pulses through her body, and somehow she felt everything he felt: his fear, his focus.
Her next conscious memory had been the following day. She was back in the drab confines of her body and a tall beautiful nurse was saying, ‘Hello there, sleeping beauty!’ It was like being returned to jail.
Except it wasn’t a nurse. This woman was the doctor who had performed her heart surgery: a quadruple bypass. In the years to come Masha often considered how her life would have been different if her heart surgeon had looked like the vast majority of heart surgeons. Her prejudices would have made her dismiss everything he had to say, no matter the accuracy. She would have put him in the same category as the grey-haired men who worked for her. She knew better than all of them. But this woman made Masha snap to attention. She felt strangely proud of her. She too was a woman at the top of her profession in a man’s world, and she was tall; it somehow mattered that she was tall like Masha. So Masha listened attentively as she talked about reducing her risk factors when it came to diet and exercise and smoking, and she listened when the doctor said, ‘Don’t let your heart be a casualty of your head.’ She wanted Masha to understand that her state of mind was just as important as the state of her body. ‘When I was on the wards in my first term of cardiac surgery we had something called the “beard sign”,’ she said. ‘Meaning that if one of our male patients was so miserable he couldn’t even be bothered to shave, his chances of recovery were not as good. You must take care of your whole self, Masha.’ Masha shaved her legs the very next day for the first time in years. She went to the cardiac rehabilitation exercise program suggested by the doctor, determined to top the class. She attacked the challenge of her health and her heart in the same way that she had once attacked challenges at work, and naturally she over-achieved beyond all expectations. ‘Good God,’ said the surgeon when Masha went to her for her first check-up.
She had never once moped. She re-created herself. She did it for the tall attractive doctor. She did it for the young man in the lake.
‘My sister also had a near-death experience,’ said Tony. ‘A horseriding accident. After her accident, she changed. Her career. Everything about her life. She got right into gardening.’ He gave Masha an uneasy look. ‘I didn’t like it.’
‘You don’t like gardening?’ said Masha, teasing a little.
He gave her a half-smile, and she saw a flash of a more attractive man.
‘I think I just didn’t want my sister to change,’ he said. ‘It felt like she’d become a stranger. Maybe it felt like she’d experienced something I couldn’t understand.’
‘People are frightened of what they don’t understand,’ said Masha. ‘I never believed in life after death before that. Now I do. And I live a better life because of it.’
‘Right,’ said Tony. ‘Yeah.’
Again Masha waited.
‘Anyway . . .’ Tony exhaled and patted his thighs, as if he were done. Masha would get nothing else of interest out of him. It did not matter. The next twenty-four hours would tell her so much more about this man. He would learn things he did not know about himself.
A glorious sense of calm settled upon her as she watched him leave the room, hitching up his pants with one hand. Those last remnants of doubt were gone. Maybe it was because of the thoughts of her son.
The risks were calculated. The risks were justified.
No-one ever ascended a mountain without risk.
chapter twenty-six
Napoleon
It was dawn at Tranquillum House. The fifth day of the retreat.
Napoleon parted the wild horse’s mane three times both sides.
He enjoyed the soft swooping moves of tai chi, and this was one of his favourite moves, although he heard his knees crunch like a tyre on gravel as he bent his legs. His physio said it was nothing to worry about: people Napoleon’s age crunched. It was just middle-aged cartilage.
Yao led this morning’s class in the rose garden, quietly and calmly naming each move for the nine guests who stood in a semicircle around him, all wearing their green Tranquillum House dressing-gowns. People seemed to be wearing the robes more often than not now. On the horizon behind Yao, two hot-air balloons ascended so slowly above the vineyards it looked like a painting. Napoleon and Heather had done that once, on a romantic weekend away: wine-tasting, antique shops; multiple lives ago, before children.
It was interesting: when you have children you think your life has changed forever, and it’s true, to an extent, but it’s nothing compared to how your life changes after you lose a child.
When Masha, an extraordinarily fit and healthy-looking woman, clearly passionate about what she did (his wife mistrusted passion and Zoe was still young enough to find it embarrassing, but Napoleon found it admirable), had spoken on the first day about how this experience would change them ‘in ways they could never have imagined’, Napoleon, once a believer in self-improvement, had felt an unusual sensation of bitter cynicism. He and his family had already been transformed in ways they could never have imagined. All they needed was peace and quiet, and certainly an improvement in their diets.
While I admire and salute your passion, Masha, we do not seek or desire further transformation.
‘The white crane spreads its wings,’ said Yao, and everyone moved in graceful unison with him. It was quite beautiful to see.
Napoleon, who stood at the back, as always (he’d learned to stand at the back of every audience once he hit six foot three), watched his wife and daughter lift their arms together. They both bit their bottom lips like chipmunks when they concentrated.
He heard the knees of the guy next to him crunch too, which was pleasing, because Napoleon guessed he was at least a decade younger than him. Even Napoleon could see this guy was notably handsome. He looked at Heather to see if she was maybe checking out the good-looking guy, but her eyes were opaque, like a doll’s eyes; as usual, she was somewhere deep and sad within herself.
Heather was broken.