The Book of Strange New Things(110)
The ash cloud is colossal and has stopped planes flying, not just over central America but all over the world. Flights had only just resumed after the bombing of Lahore Airport and now they’re grounded again. The airline that took you to the USA has gone out of business. I felt such a surge of distress when I heard that, a lurch in my gut. I remembered standing at Heathrow watching the planes take off and wondering which one was yours and looking forward to you coming back. The airline going bust seems symbolic. It’s like a sign that you won’t be able to come home.
Everywhere, things are breaking down. Institutions that have been around forever are going to the wall. We’ve seen this happening for years, I know, but it’s accelerating suddenly. And for once, it’s not just the underdogs that suffer while the elites carry on as usual. The elites are being hit just as hard. And I’m not only talking about bankruptcy. Some of the wealthiest people in America were murdered last week, dragged out of their homes and beaten to death. Nobody knows exactly why, but it happened during a power blackout in Seattle that lasted four days. All the systems that keep the city functioning ground to a halt. No pay cheques, no automatic teller machines, no cash registers, no electronic security locks, no TV, no traffic control, no petrol (I didn’t know petrol pumps need electricity to work, but apparently they do). Within 48 hours there was widespread looting and then people started killing each other.
The situation here in the UK is not so stable either. It’s got rapidly worse since you left. Sometimes I feel as though your leaving caused things to fall apart!
And there was more. And, in the backlog of previous messages, more still. An inventory of things that were going wrong in the house. Complaints about farcically difficult communications with utilities companies. The sudden impossibility of obtaining fresh eggs. Riots in Madagascar. Joshua pissing on the bed; the washing machine being too small for a queen-sized duvet; the local launderette having closed down. The cancellation of the church’s Saturday morning crèche service. Martial law in Georgia. (Georgia in the Russian Federation or Georgia in the USA? He couldn’t remember whether Bea had made this clear, and he didn’t feel like trawling through the screeds again to check.) Mirah and her husband emigrating to Iran, leaving Mirah’s ￡300 debt to Bea unpaid. A power surge that blew all the lightbulbs in the house. Government-employed ‘nutrition experts’ defending steep rises in the price of full-cream milk. Smashed windows and ‘For Sale’ signs at the Indian restaurant across the road. Bea’s morning sickness and what she was taking to suppress it. The sacking of a prominent UK government minister who, in a newspaper interview, had described Britain as ‘completely f*cked’. Bea’s unrequited cravings for toffee cheesecake and for intimacy with her man. Updates on mutual acquaintances whose faces Peter could not call to mind.
But, through it all, the uncomprehending hurt that he wasn’t writing to her.
This morning, I was so frantic about you, I was sure you must have died. I’d been counting the hours until you were due back from the settlement and as soon as I figured you were back, I checked for messages every two minutes. But . . . nothing. I had visions of you dying of an exotic disease from eating something poisonous, or being murdered by the people you’re ministering to. That’s how most missionaries die, isn’t it? I couldn’t think of any other reason why you would leave me in the dark for so long. Finally I cracked and wrote to that USIC guy, Alex Grainger – and got a reply almost immediately. He says you’re fine, says you have a beard now. Can you imagine how I felt, begging a stranger for hints of how my own husband is doing? I’ve eaten many slices of humble pie in my life but that one was hard to swallow. Are you sure you’re not angry with me, deep down, for getting pregnant? It was bad of me to stop taking the Pill without telling you, I know that. Please, please forgive me. I did it out of love for you and out of fear that you would die and there’d be nothing of you left. It wasn’t a selfish thing, you must believe me. I prayed and prayed about it, trying to figure out if I was just a female hankering for offspring. But in my heart, I can’t see it. All I see is love for you and for the baby that will carry some of you into the future. OK, I broke our agreement that we would wait, and that was wrong, but remember we also had an agreement that you would never drink again and then you went AWOL from the Salford Pentecost Powerhouse and I had to pick up the pieces. I understand why you went off the rails and we got over it and it’s in the past, and I’m tremendously proud of you, but the point is that you made me a solemn promise and you broke it, and life went on and so it should. And although I hate to appear as though I’m jockeying for higher moral ground, your going on a bender in Salford wasn’t done out of love, whereas my getting pregnant was.
Anyway, enough of that. My hand is throbbing from typing this and your head is probably throbbing from having to read it. I’m sorry. I should lighten up. A workman from the window company is thumping about downstairs, fixing the bathroom. I’d given up hope; I’m ashamed to say I’d even given up praying for it. After all, I’d been told that the waiting list stretched ahead for weeks. But lo and behold: bright and early this morning, the guy showed up and said his boss had told him to shift his schedule around and do our place first. God forgets nothing!
My darling Peter, please write. It doesn’t have to be the definitive statement on everything. A few lines would make me so happy. One line even. Just say hello.