The following evening Grace was due to leave 2018 for 2075. On arrival in the future she reported for her psychological debriefing with Dr Siobhan Joyce. Grace completed her psychometric tests speedily and was content to chat while Siobhan recorded her scores.
‘What brings you to 2075?’ Siobhan asked.
‘The new replication sites, in Cuba. I’m going there to help.’
‘Oh! Lovely. Any other plans?’
‘Ruby’s due to die this week. I should be with her when it happens.’
Siobhan paused in her scoring.
‘How do you feel about that?’
Grace worried that her ardour wouldn’t survive Ruby’s death. The fever of Grace’s thoughts, which made Ruby relevant to any disparate subject, was new; it might be destroyed by seeing Ruby old and frail. And because Grace felt promised to Ruby, she wanted to hold on to their attraction. If it dissipated Grace didn’t feel free to extract herself. The future was set.
But Grace had no wish to explore such issues with Siobhan. The Conclave’s psychological services were oversensitive to these kinds of doubts and anxieties, reading into them the signs of burnout, or incipient breakdown. Grace gave a more nonchalant reply.
‘I’ll have to go to her deathbed at some stage. Might as well get it out of the way.’
‘Like a dental appointment,’ Siobhan mused.
‘Or a smear,’ Grace suggested.
Siobhan returned to the psychometric scoring.
‘Doesn’t that ever worry you?’ Grace asked.
‘What?’
‘When we start to see people’s deaths that way. An unpleasant inconvenience, to tick off the chores list? A date we write in the calendar so it doesn’t slip our minds?’
‘Mm. I’d call it an adaptive strategy.’ Siobhan came to the end of her score sheet. ‘All your psychometrics are fine. You’re good to go.’
Grace went to her apartment, to pick up the wings she’d need for her flight. They were in her dressing room among her pilgrim heels and go-go boots, which had been dulled by a layer of dust. She strapped the box of wings to her back.
I could fly straight to Cuba, she thought. Be as nonchalant as Siobhan thinks I am. Pretend I forgot to look at the calendar, and Ruby’s death escaped my notice. Leave it for my silver selves to do. There’s no rush. There’s the rest of my life to turn up at Ruby’s death bed. I could spend a little longer without Ruby in the picture.
On the balcony the yellow sky awaited her. The doors could be left open when she departed. In her absence the apartment had grown stale and needed airing. She flung herself from the balcony and spun three times through the air before she pulled the cord. A wing’s breadth of twenty-four feet shot out from her shoulder blades. The current caught her and she began to glide. Buildings below her righted themselves. One of them contained Ruby.
Ruby, who had been there when Grace died, sixty years before.
It was fair to repay the favour. If Grace’s feelings changed so be it. Seeing Ruby die, and being changed by it, would remind her she was still human, and not yet Siobhan, or Margaret, or even her own silver selves with their casual disregard for death. Seeing Ruby die, Grace would feel something. With this thought Grace looped in the sky, the streets disappearing and reappearing through layers of cloud.
46
SEPTEMBER 2017
Ruby
September came, and with it autumn. Around the crematorium the trees were bronze and burgundy. Inside, Ruby sat in the front pew. She was dressed in black silk, held together with pearl buttons. Dinah was also at the front – with Henry, who Ruby had never met before, at her side. The mourners, row upon row of them, awaited the eulogy. To Ruby’s sadness and disappointment Grace was not among them. It had been a month since they saw each other.
Mrs Cusack, Bee’s friend, stood among the lilies at the lectern. Both Dinah and Ruby had declined to speak. Neither believed they could provide a reading without breaking down. Dinah’s grief was fluid and seeping. The hair that framed her face was stiff with salt water. Her breath juddered. I’m an orphan, Dinah had said that morning. I’ve been orphaned. Inwardly Ruby protested that she had been orphaned too. It was Bee who’d mothered her. Ruby could never voice in Dinah’s hearing that Bee was the true parent to both of them. That would be cruel, she knew. But she still felt her loss was as great as Dinah’s, and resented the expectation that she would be less affected.
They’d agreed that Mrs Cusack would be the best person to speak at the funeral. She’d known Bee for decades – longer than Dinah had been alive – and her advanced age made her practised at funerals. She was a monochrome column in her mourning dress and veil. Her voice was steady as she addressed Bee’s neighbours, the village shopkeepers, the dog walkers Bee knew from her morning constitutionals, and the worshippers from Bee’s church. The only people missing were the pioneers.
‘Bee rarely mentioned her scientific career,’ Mrs Cusack said, from the lectern. ‘But her silence was not from shame at her departure.’
Next to Ruby, Dinah stiffened. During their preparations for the funeral, Dinah had insisted the eulogy should focus exclusively on Bee’s later years. But Ruby was gratified that Mrs Cusack swept aside this restriction.
‘Her family wanted to live outside that particular shadow, and she deferred to their wishes. My friend lived alone after raising her family – excepting her long-time companion, Breno, who was third of his line and will be making his new home with Bee’s daughter Dinah. Those of us who were lucky enough to be Bee’s neighbours will all remember her ability to spin a good yarn. I will be forever thankful for the kindness she showed during my mother’s final months, because she relayed all the news of the village when my mother could no longer leave the house, and read novels to her when the print finally grew too dim. Bee showed me compassion when my mother departed, because she understood grief. The loss of her beloved husband early in their marriage was always present in her mind. Both Barbara and Antonio believed in the life to come, and it is a great consolation to me – as I’m sure it will be to you – that they are now reunited.’
They were reunited before, Ruby thought, remembering how Bee had tricked herself into thinking Tony was at her bedside. A delusion, but a happy one, that Ruby hoped took fresh hold at the moment of Bee’s death. Mrs Cusack returned to her seat. The coffin rolled through the velvet curtains to the sound of Scott Walker. Ruby accepted then – not a second before – that she would never see Bee again.
*
It was on the walk to Bee’s house that Ruby saw the stranger. An elderly woman stood among the sand dunes, the tide going out behind her, while the mourners progressed along the road. She wore a pastel pussy-bow blouse with a large patent handbag. Her short hair was ash-blonde and carmen-rollered.
She was Margaret Norton.
Ruby broke away from the mourners. She removed her funeral heels so that she could walk across the sand, and felt the grains rise between her toes. Margaret did not come to meet her halfway.
‘Why are you here?’ Ruby asked her.
‘To express my condolences.’ Margaret smiled and blinked slowly.
‘Is that all?’
‘No. I came to speak to the executor of Barbara’s will.’
That was Dinah. If she were confronted by Margaret, there would be a scene.
‘Surely you don’t think you’ll inherit anything?’ Ruby asked.
‘No, I don’t expect to be a named beneficiary. My aim is to ensure any stolen property in Barbara’s estate is returned to us.’
‘Stolen property?’
‘By which I mean atroposium.’
‘You investigated Bee for that. The police reclaimed your fuel.’