The Rabbit Girls(7)

‘It’s. Never. Over,’ he says, the words peppered by static breaths.

She jumps up excited. ‘But Dad, it is . . . the Wall . . . You said it would never happen, but it did. It’s down. It is over.’ But as she looks at his face she realises he is lost; he didn’t hear what she said. She sways and places her glass on the table.

He pulls at the watch on his wrist, his fingers gain no grip and it looks like he is plucking the metal links as though they were feathers. She tries to calm his hands, but he continues.

‘The ceremony . . .’ He wheezes, the words strain with effort. ‘Of innocence . . .’ His chest rattles. ‘Is drowned.’ Tears pool in his eyes then flow, gathering speed and momentum, across his cheek.

She tries to stop his hand but he bashes blindly at her. She feels the sob that comes from his chest mirrored in her own.

‘My. Love. My. Light,’ he wails, the torture in his voice so horrific she holds a hand over her mouth, shaking her head. Watching the tormented.

He becomes still, silent.

Her feet grip into the carpet and her hands ball themselves up in her sleeves.

Taking a step closer she says, ‘Dad?’

Tears wet the pillow and his hair is stuck to his forehead. His cheeks are flushed and a low murmur of a howl vibrates in him.

‘Miriam?’ he asks, still here, with her.

He begins to sob with abandon. His breathing, thick and fast, tumbles over itself.

He touches her arm to bring her closer.

‘Frieda,’ he starts.

Before she can say anything, his head arches back, his body stiffens. He jolts, buckles and crashes back on to the bed.

She steps back, alarmed.

Then again.

Every sinew of his body taut. Vibrating. The bed ricochets with the force. His hands claw. Teeth grind. His head knocks against the pillow, faster and faster.

‘No,’ she cries. Then she thinks.

She moves to the bedside table. Shin knocking on the bed.

Midazolam. The pressure plus alcohol has turned nimble fingers into thumbs as she opens the lid and draws up a millilitre of fluid.

The air in the bed whistles and groans. The base rattles. The noise echoes. Hollow.

Saliva leaks out from the corner of his mouth.

Placing the syringe between his lips, she angles it, squeezing the fluid into the inner cheek, and massages it around his bristly jaw into his gums. His teeth are clamped shut in a grimace.

She is supposed to reassure him with her voice, but finds she doesn’t have one.

She waits.

Hoping.

Praying.

His body still twitching but, she notices, with less force. He breathes in long, loud rattles.

Tears fall, hope leaking from her eyes.

She is overwhelmed by the need to hug him, to have his strong arms around her and feel safe; just once more.

She moves him into the recovery position and goes to the phone in the lounge. With fumbling fingers, she calls an ambulance, hangs up, then calls for Hilda.





3





HENRYK


From the moment she left my office, Frieda didn’t speak to me again in the class, yet I had been drawn into her sphere. She licked her finger to turn a page, I was aware. She moved her thumb across her bottom lip, I was aware. Her pencil moved, I was aware. Wanting to know what she was thinking, what had caused the urgency to press the pencil deeper into the paper. She pressed her lips together when she concentrated and when she wore her hair long, curled slightly at the ends, she would bat it away from her eyes. And all too often I became caught in the vortex of those eyes; forest deep.

She was not without admirers, but she went around with a boy named Felix: tall, thin and as skittish as a beetle. I could not see what she saw in him. I tried not to think about it, but thoughts of her seemed to consume me.

As I walked into my class each day I looked to her desk first. As I read the dry papers I was supposed to teach, I saw them through her eyes and made a point to mention Yeats or Joyce, to offer her something. Her eyes bored into mine, telling me something I could not know.

I wanted to take back what I had said in the office, to run the risk of being caught with banned books so that I could hear her voice, listen to what she had to say, absorb the languages that rolled off her tongue. It was dangerous and I knew it, yet I continued to be riveted by her every move.

There seemed no other way.





MIRIAM

By the time the ambulance has been and gone, Dad sleeps, pale as bone, and Hilda, creased and colourful as ever, drinks from a delicate cup and saucer. Mum’s best china: white with a sapphire trim.

‘You did well,’ Hilda says. ‘I think it’s coming to the end now; it’s always tough, but you did well.’ Her tone commands Miriam to look at her, so she lifts her head before returning to watch his breaths fog up the oxygen mask, askew on his face. ‘He’s comfortable.’

‘There is so much I didn’t know,’ Miriam says.

‘It can feel that way, but it’s really normal,’ Hilda says, raising her cup. ‘To want more time.’

‘He was talking earlier, something about drowning, innocence . . . a ceremony,’ Miriam says, her voice shaking. ‘And he has numbers.’

‘Numbers? A tattoo?’

Miriam nods and puts both hands, hidden by sleeves, up to her face. ‘I thought they were together,’ she says, muffled by the clean fabric of her jumper.