The Cry Read online

  It was just as pointless, what Joanna was doing, but she couldn’t stop. ‘One, two, three, four, five,’ she counted, pressing two fingers crossed with two fingers onto Noah’s tiny chest – ‘One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five . . .’

  Alistair was at the side of the road now, screaming when cars and trucks drove past: ‘Stop you arseholes, stop!’

  ‘One, two, three, four, five . . .’

  ‘We’ll drive to Geelong hospital.’ He was standing over her.

  ‘One, two, three, four, five.’

  ‘Joanna.’

  ‘One, two, three, four, five.’

  ‘Joanna.’

  ‘One, two, three, four, five.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘One, two, three, four, five.’

  ‘Joanna, stop now. Stop.’

  ‘One, two, three, four, five.’

  ‘FUCKING STOP!’

  The next day, Joanna would notice two large bruises under each arm from where Alistair grabbed her and hauled her away from her son.

  His voice came from a different place as he wrestled – from his teeth, it seemed: ‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop.’

  She kicked him in the shin, struggling to be released. He would show her his bruises the following day.

  ‘He’s gone. He’s gone,’ Alistair said.

  She tried to push Alistair away. ‘Let me go. Let me save him.’

  ‘Our baby’s gone. Noah’s gone.’ He managed to get both her arms behind her back, twisting them to restrain her. ‘Get in the car.’ He pushed her, forced her in, slammed the door and pressed the key to lock it. Face up against the window he said loudly: ‘Don’t move and don’t look. I’m going to put him in his seat and then we’re going to the hospital.’

  She couldn’t not look. How dare he ask her not to?

  Alistair picked up Noah, put him in the car-seat without doing up the belt, and shut the door.

  ‘Do up his belt! Do up his belt!’

  He sighed, opened the back door again, lifted the left buckle, reached for the right, and struggled to press them together. ‘I told you to look away!’

  She would not look away.

  Alistair slammed the back door shut, opened his, and fell into the driver’s seat. ‘Turn your head to the front.’

  She refused.

  ‘Turn around now.’

  She was on her knees, reaching to the back, her hand on Noah’s little foot. ‘It’s so cold.’

  She heard Alistair’s head bash against the steering wheel, followed by a groan.

  ‘His feet are so cold,’ Joanna repeated.

  ‘He died hours ago.’

  This made Joanna turn around. ‘What?’

  ‘He’s been dead for hours.’ A thin line of spit connected Alistair’s open mouth and his knee. She’d never seen him cry, so she wasn’t sure if this was what he was doing. No noises, no tears, just dribble.

  ‘Why would you say that? We’d have noticed.’

  ‘We’ve been too terrified to look at him in case we woke him up. It’s rigor mortis‚ Joanna.’ His tone was worse than angry. Venomous. Accusatory.

  ‘What?’

  He pulled his head up and yelled. ‘He’s stiff, Goddam it!’

  ‘Stiff?’

  ‘You don’t get stiff for hours.’

  ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘What I mean, Joanna, is he died on the plane.’

  *

  She was on her way to hell. That’s why the sky ahead was getting blacker. Joanna calmed herself with the idea. She died and went to hell, that’s all – just as she knew she would, since the affair. Noah wasn’t dead. She was. It wasn’t real, just part of the hell she was going to, and deserved. ‘I died. I’m just on my way to hell, that’s all.’

  ‘We’re half an hour from Geelong.’ Alistair’s voice jolted her out of this wonderful alternative. ‘Please try and be quiet so I can concentrate.’

  They had been driving for ten minutes. Shock, and the sound of the air conditioning, had transported Joanna to a better place than this. Hell. But now she was back in the passenger seat of some rental car with Alistair driving, and . . .

  She turned round.

  ‘Noooo!’ Joanna rocked her head back and forth, hoping dizziness might swirl this into nothingness. Rock faster, back and forward, rub it out, take it away.

  ‘Cot death? Was it cot death?’ The rocking hadn’t worked.

  ‘Maybe.’ His voice was a little less venomous now, but only a little.

  ‘Or was there something really wrong with him? Was he sick? Is that why he always cried?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  A rock and moan combination this time, before stopping suddenly: ‘He was constipated.’

  ‘Was he?’ Alistair’s ‘was’ was harsh, as if to say I didn’t know that. You should have told me. Maybe if you’d told me . . .

  ‘I stopped telling you things like that because you said I should stop worrying about every little thing. Oh God, maybe he was crying because he was . . . because he was really sick and I missed it. I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Stop grabbing at me! We’ll crash. Try not to think now. We’ll talk at the hospital. Let’s just get to the fucking hospital.’

  She settled on a tiny head rock motion as she could think more clearly this way. ‘Could he have been allergic to the Calpol I gave him?’

  ‘You didn’t give him Calpol.’

  ‘I did. About three hours before we landed.’

  Alistair swerved to the side of the road and stopped the car with a skid. He yanked at the handbrake hard then turned to her. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Why? What?’

  ‘When did you give him Calpol?’

  ‘Why? That’s not bad, is it? It was baby Calpol.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How much did you give him?’

  ‘The dose.’

  Alistair opened his door and walked against the traffic to the back of the car. A lorry beeped and swerved, just missing him. He opened the boot. Joanna turned to see what he was doing, but all she saw was her baby. She stretched her hand out towards him, then retrieved it. She didn’t want to feel the cold. But little Noah! From where she was, he just looked like he was sleeping. She turned back and put her head in her lap.

  Alistair got back in the car and slammed the door. He held one of the unlabelled hundred-millilitre bottles of liquid before her.

  ‘So you gave him a dose when I was asleep, yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Three hours before we landed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Alistair snatched the bottle back and looked at it.

  He opened the door, ran to the boot again, and came back with the second bottle of liquid.

  ‘Oh no . . .’ Joanna said as he sat back in his seat, bottle in hand.

  ‘How many doses of antibiotics have you had since we left?’

  ‘One. You gave it to me in Dubai.’

  Alistair put his finger on the rim of the bottle he had just retrieved and tasted a drip of the medicine. It had about the same amount of fluid missing as the first bottle. ‘This is the antibiotics.’

  He opened the lid of the first bottle, touched the rim with his finger, and pressed his finger onto his tongue. ‘Strawberry. This is the Calpol.’

  Alistair put the Calpol on the dashboard – to his left.

  And the antibiotics on the dashboard – right.

  ‘I always taste it, Joanna.’ He paused, looked at the bottles, then turned to her: ‘Do you?’

  *

  In any relationship, the role of each partner is defined very quickly, Joanna’s counsellor told her in the first of her sessions. She booked the counsellor five weeks after she met Alistair, a week after he told her he was married. Unable to extricate herself from him, she felt confused and upset by her behaviour. She’d never hurt anyone before. She’d never lied either, apart from the occasional white one (Of course I came!). She’d al
ways done the things she set her mind to. And she’d never felt ashamed of herself. Now she was so ashamed that she hadn’t told her best friend, and had paid thirty-five pounds to tell this overweight woman instead. Joanna listened to her counsellor, but she didn’t want to hear about ‘roles’. What she wanted was for the counsellor to say: ‘Affairs are okay. It’s society that’s fucked. You go for it girl. And stop feeling so Goddam guilty. On the continent, you’d be mocked for not taking a lover.’

  But, no, the counsellor did not say this. From her velour armchair, she looked at Joanna with concern and spent the entire session talking about roles. ‘They are based on assumptions you make about each other’s characteristics,’ she said, ‘assumptions which are made almost immediately, which may well be wrong, and which are very difficult to unmake.’

  Joanna thought about this after the session. It was true. By the time she and Alistair had finished their first meal together – he ordered for her, the fillet of pollock – the following assumptions had been poured, levelled and set.

  ALISTAIR JOANNA

  I’m a risk taker. I’m a big fearty.

  I’m ambitious. I work to live.

  I enjoy gathering facts. I’m crap with details.

  I remember things. I’m forgetful.

  I’m good under pressure. I cave.

  I’m a decision maker. Am I?

  I’m someone you should listen to. I talk shite!

  And there you had them. Joanna and Alistair. Alistair and Joanna. From day one till now. And she was okay with that. It wasn’t bad, any of it. It worked. It would probably have worked for ever, if not for airport security.

  She wasn’t sure why, but she never told Alistair about the counsellor.

  *

  Alistair helped Joanna’s limp, shaky body out of the car, and practically carried her to the small grass embankment at the side of the road. As she wobbled her way in a haze, she knew her plan to change the way they made decisions was just typical nonsense talk. She wasn’t good under pressure. She wasn’t a decision maker. Right now, she could barely breathe and walk, let alone think. The heat was choking her. She needed to vomit.

  So, after Alistair held her hair while she was sick, after he lowered her down so her back was supported by the three-foot-high embankment; after he checked that passing cars could not see them and crouched down beside her; it was he who did the talking. And she who listened.

  Because Alistair is someone you should listen to.

  The Facts

  He positioned himself a few inches away from her, his back against the dry yellow earth of the embankment, and stared ahead. ‘I want you to focus,’ he said. ‘What we do next will change our lives for ever. Don’t try and turn and look at the car. Look straight ahead and don’t say anything. I’m going to list the facts.’

  Her hands were shaking violently. She sat on them and stared ahead as he’d ordered. The field was flat and yellow and she couldn’t see where it ended, if it did. Nothing was growing in it. No animals were grazing in it. The hot north wind that fuelled the fires in the distance carried eerie brown clouds of dust south, tussling with her hair on its way. A flake of ash danced at her nose, up down, up down, then settled on her right ankle. Now that she’d been placed in this spot, she couldn’t move and didn’t want to. She wanted to sit there till she died. Perhaps she could do that, die of thirst at the side of this road, never ever going back to that car. If she asked Alistair, maybe he would agree to leave her there. She would. She’d ask him, once he was done with the usual routine: listing the facts, deciding on a plan of attack, getting the job done.

  Hang on, what job was there to do? How was any of this bullshit ever going to help?

  His voice interrupted her thoughts. As ever, he listed the facts in point form. She didn’t turn her head or move her eyes towards him, but she could see in her peripheral vision that he had stretched out his arm and lifted his thumb, ready to nail down the first.

  ‘One: Noah is dead.’

  His voice was steady, in control. His index finger came out to join the thumb that was heavy and pulsing with its fact.

  ‘Two: It’s our fault.’

  His fingers were too short. And chubby.

  ‘Three: One or both of us will be charged with neglect, or manslaughter, or murder, especially after your behaviour on the plane.’

  Well she had murdered Noah. She should be charged with that. If she couldn’t sit here till she died of thirst, her second choice would be to spend the rest of her life in prison. She almost broke the rules and said this out loud. She wanted the police to drag her away from this spot now. When they did, she’d cover her head with her T-shirt, so she wouldn’t have to look at that car again.

  ‘Four: One or both of us will go to prison. For a year, or maybe five, or for life.’

  It’d be her who’d do the time, just her. Alistair would be okay.

  ‘Five: A scandal of any kind will lose me my job. It’ll harm the Party. And I might never get work again.’

  He lifted his other hand to resume counting. His pace quickened, his tone hardened.

  ‘Six: You will never teach again.’

  Ah, the change in pace and tone was because he was talking about her now. He was angry at her. Quite right. It was his son she’d killed.

  ‘Seven: You will never be allowed to work with children again in any capacity.’

  So? She was going to die here on this embankment. Thinking about it, thirst would take too long. Two or three days maybe, she didn’t know. If she prayed, perhaps the wind would change direction and bring the flames towards them. She closed her eyes and recited the only prayer she could remember.

  I confess to almighty God

  and to you, my brothers and sisters,

  that I have greatly sinned,

  in my thoughts and in my words,

  in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,

  through my fault, through my fault,

  through my most grievous fault;

  therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,

  all the Angels and Saints,

  and you, my brothers and sisters,

  to pray for me to the Lord our God.

  She opened her eyes. The wind had not obeyed, the flames and smoke no closer. The fire wouldn’t take her.

  Instead, she’d get one of the duty-free bags out of the boot and put her head in it and tie it around her neck with the shoelaces from her trainers.

  ‘Eight: You may never be allowed to go near children again.’

  Quite right. She had murdered a baby. Her baby.

  ‘Nine: You may not be allowed to have another child of your own.’

  Another child. Another child of her own. Yes, he’d just said that out loud.

  ‘Most importantly, Ten: We might not be permitted to see Chloe. We will definitely not get custody of her, which means she will be taken into care and made parentless. An orphan, at fourteen. My own daughter. My only child now. Little Chloe.’

  Fact ten was actually three or four facts. Joanna supposed he hadn’t wanted to go back to the first hand, which already had its fill. It was neater, this way. A lot of facts, though, for that small pinky of his.

  Joanna stayed still, pretending that this stupid fucking demonstration mattered when Noah was dead in the back seat of their hire car.

  He had a closing speech, and unfortunately he wanted her to change position while he delivered it, for maximum impact‚ she supposed. He took her hand from under her buttock and held it in his, which was cold. She wondered how it could be cold, in this situation, in this stifling heat. Perhaps because he wasn’t human.

  Using his other hand, he turned her face towards his. Her eyes were slow catching up, but eventually they landed where he wanted them.

  He was dripping with sweat, she noticed. Beads on his forehead, huge patches under his armpits and above his stomach.

  ‘Noah is dead. He must have been allergic to the penicillin. It was an accident.’

/>   This is as close as he would come to saying it wasn’t her fault. It was an accident. Not quite not her fault.

  ‘You’re finished with the facts,’ she said with confidence, on account of the long pause.

  ‘I am.’ He put his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘I’d like to die here, if that’s all right. I was thinking of using one of those duty-free bags, and I was wondering if you’d mind getting one from the boot for me.’

  ‘Joanna, don’t. We have Chloe to think about.’

  Joanna leaned down and tried to untie one of her laces. Her hands were either numb or just plain disobedient. She couldn’t work out how to do it, but she persevered, and eventually managed to pull at the right piece. She pushed at the back of the loose trainer with her other foot.

  ‘Stop that now.’

  Ah, the shoe finally came off. Now, she just had to get the laces all the way out. She placed the shoe on her lap and began loosening and tugging. This was going to be easy, she thought. All she had to do was get Alistair to retrieve the plastic bag. He hadn’t said no, but he wasn’t budging. She wouldn’t do it. She would never look at that car again. She’d persuade him, somehow. ‘Got it!’ she said, lifting the freed lace and turning towards Alistair with a triumphant smile.

  You couldn’t describe it as a slap, although she didn’t actually see if his fist was clenched or not. Whatever, it landed on her left cheekbone, the force causing her head to do an Exorcist-twist before falling down, down to the earth beside her ankles . . .

  . . . Oh look, the flake of ash is gone.

  *

  When she woke, she was in the front seat of the car. The radio and the icy air conditioning were on.

  ‘If you live in Anglesea and Lorne and you are seeing flames, do not attempt to leave your house. It is too late . . . If you live in Torquay and you are seeing flames, do not attempt to leave your house. It is too late. If you live in Aireys Inlet . . .’

  Alistair switched it off when he realised she’d come to.