I’d prefer Paris to Brussels. Better onward connections. Trudy, still in the bathroom, mutters to herself, ‘Dollars … euros.’
Everything they say, even the sounds they make, have an air of valediction, like a sadly resolving chord, a sung farewell. This is the end; we aren’t coming back. The house, my grandfather’s house I should have grown up in, is about to fade. I won’t remember it. I’d like to summon a list of countries without extradition treaties. Most are uncomfortable, unruly, hot. I’ve heard that Beijing is a pleasant spot for runaways. A thriving village of English-speaking villains buried deep in the populated vastness of a world city. A fine place to end up.
‘Sleeping pills, painkillers,’ Claude calls out.
His voice, its tone, prompts me. Time to decide. He’s closing up the cases, fastening leather straps. So quick. They must have been half-packed already. These are old-fashioned two-wheeled items, not four. Claude lifts them to the floor.
Trudy says, ‘Which?’
I think she’s holding up two scarves. Claude grunts his choice. This is only a pretence of normality. When they board the train, when they cross the border, their guilt will declare itself. They only have an hour and they should hurry. Trudy says there’s a coat she wants and can’t find. Claude insists she won’t need it.
‘It’s lightweight,’ she says. ‘The white one.’
‘You’ll stand out in a crowd. On CCTV.’
But she finds it anyway, just as Big Ben strikes eight and the news comes on. They don’t pause to listen. There are still last things to gather up. In Nigeria, children burned alive in front of their parents by keepers of the flame. In North Korea, a rocket is launched. Worldwide, rising sea levels run ahead of predictions. But none of these is first. That’s reserved for a new catastrophe. A combination, poverty and war, with climate change held in reserve, driving millions from their homes, an ancient epic in new form, vast movements of people, like engorged rivers in spring, Danubes, Rhines and Rhones of angry or desolate or hopeful people, crammed at borders against the razor-wire gates, drowning in thousands to share in the fortunes of the West. If, as the new cliché goes, this is biblical, the seas are not parting for them, not the Aegean, not the English Channel. Old Europa tosses in her dreams, she pitches between pity and fear, between helping and repelling. Emotional and kind this week, scaly-hearted and so reasonable the next, she wants to help but she doesn’t want to share or lose what she has.
And always, there are problems closer at hand. As radios and TVs everywhere drone on, people continue about their business. A couple has finished packing for a journey. The cases are closed, but there’s a picture of her mother that the young woman wants to bring. The heavy carved frame is too large to pack. Without the right tool the photograph can’t be removed, and the tool, a special kind of key, is in the basement, deep in a drawer. A taxi waits outside. The train leaves in fifty-five minutes, the station is a good way off, there may be queues for security and passport control. The man carries a suitcase out to the landing and returns, a little out of breath. He should have made use of the wheels.
‘We absolutely have to go.’
‘I’ve got to have this picture.’
‘Carry it under your arm.’
But she has a handbag, her white coat, a suitcase to tow, and me to carry.
With a moan, Claude lifts the second suitcase to carry it out. By this unneeded effort he’s making a point about urgency.
‘It won’t take you a minute. It’s in a front corner of the left-hand drawer.’
He returns. ‘Trudy. We’re leaving. Now.’
The exchange has grown from terse to bitter.
‘You carry it for me.’
‘Out of the question.’
‘Claude. It’s my mother.’
‘I don’t care. We’re leaving.’
But they’re not. After all my turns and revisions, misinterpretations, lapses of insight, attempts at self-annihilation, and sorrow in passivity, I’ve come to a decision. Enough. My amniotic sac is the translucent silk purse, fine and strong, that contains me. It also holds the fluid that protects me from the world and its bad dreams. No longer. Time to join in. To end the endings. Time to begin. It’s not easy to free my right arm lodged tight against my chest, or gain movement in my wrist. But now it’s done. A forefinger is my own special tool to remove my mother from the frame. Two weeks early and fingernails so long. I make my first attempt at an incision. My nails are soft and, however fine, the fabric is tough. Evolution knows its business. I feel for the indent my finger made. There’s a crease, well defined, and that’s where I try again, and again, until the fifth attempt, when I feel the faintest rendering, and on the sixth, the tiniest rupture. Into this tear I succeed in working the tip of my nail, my finger, then two fingers, three, four, and at last my balled fist punches through and there follows behind it a great outpouring, the cataract at the beginning of life. My watery protection has vanished.
Now I’ll never know how the business of the photograph or the nine o’clock train would have been resolved. Claude is outside the room at the head of the stairs. He’ll have a case in each hand, ready to descend.
My mother calls out with what sounds like a disappointed moan. ‘Oh Claude.’
‘What now?’
‘My waters. Breaking!’
‘We’ll deal with it later. On the train.’
He must believe it’s a ploy, a continuation of the argument, a repellent form of womanly trouble that he’s too frantic to consider.
I’m shrugging off the caul, my first experience of undressing. I’m clumsy. Three dimensions seem three too many. I foresee the material world will be a challenge. My discarded shroud remains twisted round my knees. No matter. I’ve new business below my head. I don’t know how I know what to do. It’s a mystery. There’s some knowledge we simply arrive with. In my case, there’s this, and a smattering of poetic scansion. No blank slate after all. I bring that same hand to my cheek, and slide further along the muscular wall of the uterus to reach down and find the cervix. It’s a tight squeeze against the back of my head. It’s there, at the opening to the world, that I delicately palpate with puny fingers and immediately, as if some spell has been uttered, the great power of my mother is provoked, the walls around me ripple then tremble and close in on me. It’s an earthquake, it’s a giant stirring in her cave. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I’m horrified then crushed by the strength that’s unleashed. I should have waited my turn. Only a fool would mess with such force. From far away I hear my mother call out. It could be a shout for help or a scream of triumph or pain. And then I feel it on the top of my head, my crown – one centimetre dilated! No turning back.
Trudy has crawled onto the bed. Claude is somewhere near the door. She’s panting, excited, and very afraid.
‘It’s started. It’s so quick! Get an ambulance.’
He says nothing for a moment, then he asks simply, ‘Where’s my passport?’
The failure is mine. I underestimated him. The point in arriving early was to ruin Claude. I knew he was trouble. But I thought he loved my mother and would stay with her. I’m beginning to understand her fortitude. Over the bright jingling sound of coins against mascara case as he rummages through her handbag, she says, ‘I hid it. Downstairs. Just in case this happened.’
He considers. He’s dealt in property, he owned a skyscraper in Cardiff and knows about a deal. ‘Tell me where it is and I’ll call you an ambulance. Then I’ll go.’
Her voice is cautious. Closely observing her own state, waiting for, wanting and dreading the next wave. ‘No. If I’m going down so are you.’
‘Fine. No ambulance.’