The Pull of the Stars(66)

Unless we go up on the roof for a bit of air?

I said it lightly.

Bridie looked taken aback.

I suppose I was feeling festive because it was my birthday. Our birthday. Also, it had been a good day. For all the slow misery of Mary O’Rahilly’s obstructed labour, and the horror of Honor White’s bad reaction to my blood, nobody had died. Not in our ward, at least; not in our small square of the sickened, war-weary world.

Bridie asked, Climb up the side of the roof, you mean?

I smiled at the notion. No climbing necessary. There’s a flat part one can walk out on, between the pointy sections.

Well, that’s a relief.

What I treasured about this young woman was that she never said no. She was game for anything, it seemed, including scrambling up the gabled roof of a four-storey building.

I grabbed a handful of blankets from a shelf as we were passing. I led Bridie through an unmarked door and up a narrow staircase. The last, smallest door seemed a dead end, but I’d been up here before when I needed a break, a breath, a cigarette, and a view of the city. I told her, It’s never locked.

Out onto the tarred rooftop. It was a grand clear evening, for once, not a rag of cloud in the navy-blue sky. On a fine day in summer, there’d be little knots of staff basking during their dinner hour, but after nine o’clock on an autumn night, the two of us had the expanse to ourselves.

The old moon wrote its last faint C just above the parapet. A little streetlight leaked up from the hushed city below. I leaned my elbows on the bricks and peered down. I said, A walk would have been nice too. Maybe another day.

It hit me that once the hospital got back to its standards and routines, an unqualified skivvy would no longer be needed or, in fact, allowed. Odds were, Bridie would be thanked and discharged. Would I ever—no, how would I contrive to see her again?

I’m a grand walker, Bridie was saying, I can go on forever. Every Sunday at the home, we used to go five miles to the sea in a crocodile.

Ridiculously, I envisioned her in the belly of an actual crocodile. I tried to replace that picture with an image of a small Bridie dancing on the shoreline, tossing stones at the waves, running into the water and screeching with delight.

You went bathing?

She shook her head. It was just for exercise. We had to turn around and walk right back. We weren’t allowed to link arms or we’d get the strap, but we could chat without moving our mouths.

I didn’t know what to say.

Face tipped up to the sky, Bridie swayed.

I took her elbow. Don’t topple over the edge, now.

The stars are so bright, I’m dazzled!

I looked up and found the Great Bear. I told her, In Italy, they used to blame the influence of the constellations for making them sick—that’s where influenza comes from.

Bridie took that notion in stride. As if, when it’s your time, your star gives you a yank—

And she tugged as if reeling in a fish.

It’s hardly scientific thinking, I admitted.

She said, Maybe not. But I have heard it’s all set down up there.

What is?

The day each of us is going to die.

That’s pure nonsense, Bridie.

She lifted and then dropped her bony shoulders. I don’t have to be scientific; I’m not the nurse.

You’ve the makings of one, though. If you wanted.

Bridie stared, then laughed that off.

I did realise that this job was too grim for most people, all the stinking and leaking and dying. Mine was a peculiar vocation.

You know, Bridie, I mark down every patient I lose.

Where? In a book?

I think you saw me doing it.

I pulled out my watch now, without looking at the time, and dropped it in her palm, facedown.

Bridie weighed it in her hand. Would this be solid silver?

I suppose so. It was my mother’s.

(I added that so she wouldn’t think I’d earned enough to buy myself such a thing.)

She murmured, It’s still warm from you.

The chain between the two of us was a taut umbilicus.

I put my finger to one of the bockedy scratched circles on the watch back. Every full moon means a patient of mine who’s died.

But not through your fault.

I hope not. It’s hard to be absolutely sure. In this job, one has to learn to live with that.

She asked, And the little curved pieces?

They’re crescent moons instead of full ones.

The babies?

She never missed a trick, this one. I nodded.

Bridie peered more closely now. Some are only little scratches.

Those ones were stillborn. Or miscarried, if far enough on that I could tell whether it was a girl or a boy.

So you scar your precious watch for all of them because you feel bad?

I shook my head. I just…

Bridie suggested, Want to remember them?

Oh, I remember them anyway. Often I wish I didn’t.

Do they haunt you, like?

I struggled to find the words. I have a sense that they want to be recorded somewhere. Need to be. Demand to be, even.

Bridie stroked the silver curve. It’s a sort of map of the dead, then. A sky full of moons.

I took the watch back and tucked it into my pocket. I told her, I’m often just as haunted by the ones who live. Mrs. White’s boy, for instance.

Bridie nodded.

I keep thinking, instead of him going into the pipe, if some nice young couple—like the O’Rahillys, say—if they didn’t mind his lip, and adopted him…