The Pull of the Stars(68)

I’d never believed the future was inscribed for each of us the day we were born. If anything was written in the stars, it was we who joined those dots, and our lives were the writing.

But Baby Garrett, born dead yesterday, and all the others whose stories were over before they began, and those who opened their eyes and found they were living in a long nightmare, like Bridie and Baby White—who decreed that, I wondered, or at least allowed it?

My stomach growled so loudly, Bridie giggled, and I did too.

I remembered what had been sitting in my bag all day. I asked, Peckish?

Why, what’ve you got there?

Chocolate truffles from Belgium and an Italian orange.

Bridie marvelled, No!

Birthday presents from my brother, Tim.

The fruit was easier to peel than I’d expected. Its perfume spritzed off under my thumbnail. Behind rags of white, the flesh was so dark in the starlight, it looked nearly purple.

Bridie peered at it. Ah, wouldn’t you know, after all that, it’s a rotten one.

It is not! Smell it.

She looked revolted but leaned in for a sniff. Her face lit up.

I said, Blood oranges are called that because of the colour inside. Ever so sweet, and hardly any seeds.

The segments parted in my fingers. I ripped the thin membrane. The sacs ranged from yellow through orange to maroon, almost black.

Bridie bit a segment warily. Oh—the juice almost leaked from her mouth, and she had to suck it back—that’s only glorious.

Isn’t it?

Happy birthday, Julia.

I licked trickles of juice off my hands in a way that would have caused Matron to sack me on the spot. Yours too, now, remember? The first of November.

The first of November, she repeated solemnly. I won’t forget.

Happy birthday, Bridie.

No sound now but the small wet noises of the orange being devoured between us.

You’re awfully easy to talk to, I found myself saying. Since Tim came back from the front, he doesn’t.

Bridie didn’t ask, Doesn’t what? Instead, she asked, Doesn’t talk to you?

To anyone. Not a word anymore. As if his throat’s been cut—except the damage is all in his mind.

I wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to blab all this, to set one small pebble of pain on the scale against Bridie’s boulders.

It’s not something I usually tell people, I added.

Bridie asked, Why not?

Well. A sort of superstitious fear, I suppose, that once I say it in so many words, it’ll be true.

Bridie put her head to one side. Isn’t it true already?

Yes, but…more official. Permanent. I’ll be Julia with the mute brother.

She nodded. Does that mortify you?

That’s not it.

Grieves you, Bridie suggested.

I nodded, swallowing.

Well, she murmured. Lucky you, I say.

Lucky for having a mute brother?

Having a brother, she corrected me. Any kind.

She was right, I told myself. This was how Tim was. This was the brother I had now.

After a pause, she said: Or having anyone.

Oh, Bridie!

She did one of her little monkey-like shrugs.

I cleared my throat raggedly. Tim still has his sense of humour.

Well, then.

Also a magpie he’s very fond of.

There’s posh, she said teasingly.

He’s a great gardener and a good scratch cook.

The magpie?

My laughter echoed across the jagged roofline.

I divided the truffles. We scarfed up one each, then had a game to see who could take longest to melt her second one on the heat of her tongue.

Bridie said thickly, This is some condemned man’s last meal, all right.

I thought of the patient whose mind was turned by the flu, the one who’d jumped to his death from a window. But I didn’t say a word. Let Bridie enjoy her truffle.

I was cold but I didn’t care. I turned my face up to the starry sky and blew out a long steamy plume.

Did you know, other planets have lots of moons instead of just one?

Bridie said, Come off it.

It’s a fact. I got it out of a library book. Neptune has three, and Jupiter eight—or, no, scientists just found the ninth by taking a picture with a very long exposure.

Bridie tilted her head to one side, as if I were pulling her leg.

It occurred to me that Jupiter’s ninth moon might not in fact be the last; the astronomers might keep discovering more of them as the centuries slowly wheeled by. Maybe if they got stronger telescopes they’d glimpse a tenth, an eleventh, a twelfth. It made my head spin, the shining plenitude up there. And down here. The dancing generations, the busy living—even if we were outnumbered by the quiet dead.

A man was caterwauling on the street below. I said, We should drop something on that fellow.

Bridie laughed. Ah, stop. I like an old song.

Would you dignify this one by the name?

It’s “Are We Downhearted?”

It’s drunken gibberish.

She sang, Are we downhearted?

She waited for me to give the response. Then answered herself with the punch line: No! On she went: Then let your voices ring, and all together sing. Are we downhearted?

On the third verse, I finally supplied the No!

The time rolled by. At some point in our long and rambling conversation, Bridie and I agreed it must be well after midnight.