She sidles the chair right next to the bed and locks the wheels in place, and then stands behind him.
I need to get my arms under here, she says. She pulls his arms up and puts hers underneath them. He’s so heavy. She struggles, pushing him forward, and he turns himself out of the chair and onto the bed. She puts a hand on his back to support him. Pushes him with it, and then she uses her other hand to try and get his legs up. His body turns too much, so she pulls him up the bed. He still gives her nothing.
She tries to manoeuvre him onto his back. She does this by pushing one shoulder and pulling the other, trying to make him do it himself. Now one hand on his shoulder, pulling, and the other on his knee, then his thigh. Incremental stages to get him flipped over. Next, her hand on his shoulder and her other hand looped around his thigh. She heaves and pulls, but doesn’t know if she can do it. Heave and pull, and finally his legs start to move, and, almost independently, his torso. He’s not flat on his back now, but as near as, and he starts to make a noise from deep inside him. She tries to yank him up the bed again, because he’s a foot clear of his pillows, and his legs dangle off the end of the metal frame. Small movements, but movement all the same: an inch at a time. Maybe less. Over and over, tiny repeated movements.
She remembers meeting him for the first time. They’re at school, their last year. Everybody says it’s perfect. That they’re perfect.
Pull and release, over and over, until the pillow is underneath his head, the first pillow at least. The pillows are so thin and unsupportive. No pillowcase. Instead gauze, designed to be easily washed, so that the whole pillow can be put straight in the washer. She tries to squeeze it into a shape that’s more comfortable.
Lift your head, she says, knowing that it won’t do anything. She bunches the pillows up but she can’t make him look comfortable. This would be easier with normal pillows, she says. She tries to shift him up the bed more, but he won’t budge. This is as much as she can do. She stands back to look at him, and he rolls his eyes and opens and closes his jaw, and his hands twitch and his legs are totally, unbearably still.
I’m sorry, she says. She’s not apologizing for her inability to make him comfortable, she knows, but if anybody heard her, that’s what it would sound like. All the way home on the train Beth tells herself that this will be easy. That this is the right thing to do.
When she gets home she sits in the spare bedroom and puts the Machine on and listens to audio of Vic talking about her: not the good stuff, the stuff that he wanted to keep, but the bad. The bits that they wanted jettisoned.
On Monday, after school, Laura is waiting for Beth by the gates. She’s smiling.
I was hoping to catch you, she says. Good day?
It was a day, Beth says. Wouldn’t go as far as the good part.
Fancy telling me about it over a glass of wine?
Beth stalls. I was going to do marking, she says. Her bag feels pitifully light for that excuse. I’ve got a bit to catch up on.
You could do it after the wine and get it done twice as fast, Laura says. The looseness you get from wine really helps with your marking, I’ve heard. She persists. Go on. I don’t know anybody else, and this is getting pretty tiresome, being here like this. It’s you and wine, or by myself in the guest house all afternoon, sweating under my dodgy air-conditioner. Her last try. The first round’s on me, she says.
Okay, Beth says. Sure, why not?
They walk down the road away from the school, past the kids. They know what they’re like: smoking, playing up. Across the way, a group of them pull their hoods over their faces and start walking with an affected limp. Beth can hear music from one of their cars. It sounds like drumming. Nothing but the headache of a beat.
They have cars, even here? Why would a teenage boy need a car on the island? asks Laura.
How else are you going to crash one and write it off? Beth replies. That makes Laura laugh. They don’t really talk, because it’s so hot, and then they reach a pub that Beth recognizes but has never been into.
This one? Laura asks. The temperature inside is much lower. They open the door and there’s almost a thin mist from within, as if they’ve opened a freezer, and Beth feels goose-bumps thrum up her arms. They pick a table away from the bar, where it’s quiet, and Laura leaves her bag there with Beth while she goes and orders. Beth watches her talking to the barman, who seems like he’s been asleep – he rubs his face and yawns as she orders, and he fumbles a wine glass as he places it on the bar, nearly smashing it, but Laura catches it before it rolls off the lip – and thinks about how long it’s been since she had a drink out like this. She drank at the Christmas party once, a few years ago, but she never goes out. Not to pubs. Not with her workmates.
Laura comes back with the wine. Went with this, she says, waving the bottle around. It sloshes, nearly up the neck and out. Got the bottle, because it worked out cheaper, if we drink it. She sits down. We’ll drink it, right? She pours them both a glass, filling each well over the recommended-measurement line, and then drinks from hers. Sorry, she says, should’ve made a toast.
You don’t need to, Beth says.
No, I do. Thanks for this. I was getting lonely. Here’s to not being lonely, Laura says. They both raise their glasses and chink them across the table.
How are you getting on? Beth asks.
Fine, Laura says. She tells Beth a story about one of the boys taking his penis out in class, under his desk. She says, You warned me about him as well, and there was I thinking you were insane. Butter wouldn’t melt, I thought, and suddenly … Well, there it is.
Jesus! Beth says.
The rest of the class died laughing. Even the girls.
They try. They’re good kids.
He had his penis out. Doesn’t matter how good a class is, they’re always going to push that one. But I’m enjoying it, the teaching. She smiles. Not the penis. They both laugh. They need something, Laura says. Seems like a lot of them here don’t have faith. Not big on churches or family here, are they? Beth doesn’t answer. She’s not big on either herself, but that isn’t something she can say. It’s not something she can hold against Laura either. The silence pushes Laura to change the subject. So what about you? she asks. She looks at Beth’s hand and points. You’re married?
Beth has to stop herself telling the truth. It’s there, in her mouth. She’s suddenly aware of how much she wants to talk about it. Yes, she says. He’s in the army, so I’m sort of alone a lot.
No sort of about it, Laura says. My dad was in the army. I get that, what it’s like. Selfish, I used to think. Sorry, I mean. You know.
Beth nods. I know, she says. It can be, a bit. She thinks about how many people she’s told the truth to since it happened. Her doctor, the psychiatrist she took herself to when she was having trouble sleeping, after Vic went into the home; a man on the telephone, when she called the helpline for Victims of Vacancy; a man who nagged her insistently once, in the early days, in a bar, practically rubbing himself against her body, taking her to the point of tears and then, from him, remorse. Three people, that’s what a tight secret it is. And here, now, she’s thinking of telling all to a woman who’s nearly a complete stranger.
Kids? Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.
No, Beth replies. No kids. Just me.
Right, so that’s definitely alone then. There’s a hint of something in Laura’s accent, something Irish maybe. Something lilting. Makes everything she says sound somehow vague. How often is he back? she asks.
Not often.
Where have they got him?
Iran, Beth says. He’s out there as one of the last peacekeepers. It’s safest: everybody knows about