Chapter Eight
He was
alone, and in the dead of winter night, the lane stretched out
forever. Laurie stumbled slowly along the verge. There was just
enough demarcation there between grass and track that he could find
his way.
He
remembered sunlight and Sasha at his side. The crackling electrical
snap in the air between them. He had known then that they were
walking toward a union that would change his life. Yes, the lane
had been a path between two worlds. It still was. The last shreds
of Laurie’s childhood lay behind him, drops of his blood on the
richly carpeted floor of a Mayfair house. Sasha had said he should
get out. Very well. He was gone. Sasha would help him to build a
new life.
He had
to stay alive to let him. Laurie missed his footing, crashed hard
to his hands and knees on the verge. The impact sent stars of pain
skyrocketing through his skull and his lungs. By the time he had
forced himself upright once more, he no longer cared about any
future more distant or complex than his next step. The night was
moonless. The lights of Birchwood somehow did not reach here as
they had when Sasha had walked him back to the main road. The fires
of the encampment did not shine.
Perhaps
they were gone. Up until eight o’clock that night, Laurie had
believed certain things without ever fully articulating them to
himself. That, if pushed, his mother would stand up to defend not
only her small daughter but her grown-up son, as well. That he
still had a place in his home, and that his father still loved him
enough not to knock him unconscious on the edge of a table. Perhaps
other things he believed were just as fragile, just as much
products of his own need. “Ves’tacha,” Sasha had called him, and
Laurie had believed that too…
But who could possibly call him beloved and have it be true? He
was nothing, wasn’t he? Useless. Pathetic. The lights were gone,
the encampment vanished. Sasha, who was kind but not stupid, had
told him what he wanted to hear.
Oh, God.
He was sobbing, off the path and caught once more in the fucking
brambles. He stopped himself, mortified. The encampment was barely
twenty yards away, over in the trees to his right. He had not seen
it because his head had been down, his vision wiped out by
self-pity. He turned, reorienting himself, tore himself out of the
thorns, and headed for the lights.
Zaga the
bulldog ran out like a bullet the second she heard him. Sasha had
been right, though. She knew him this time and did not bark.
“That’s just great,” Laurie whispered to her, dropping to his
knees.
He
couldn’t take another step, had been relying on her commotion to
draw someone’s attention. That was it, then. He was out here for
the night. Apart from his sorrow at being so near to Sasha and
unable to make the last stretch, it didn’t seem so bad to him. The
packed earth beneath him was becoming oddly soft. If the bloody dog
would stop dancing around him and sticking her great tongue into
his ears, he could probably lay himself down here and
sleep.
But the
rattle of her chain had been enough. The door to the nearest
caravan swung wide, emitting a rectangle of pale yellow light and
the immense shape of Gunari, Mama Luna’s son. Laurie looked up at
him. On any other night, that vision would have scared the crap out
of him—a six-foot skinhead striding out of the darkness toward him,
baseball bat swinging from one hand. Now Gunari almost seemed like
light relief. Laurie tried to laugh, but it hurt too much, and he
doubled up, coughing.
Gunari
crouched beside him. He dropped the bat and shone the torch he was
carrying into Laurie’s face. Squinting, holding up one shaking hand
to shield himself, Laurie bore the examination patiently. He heard
Gunari fire off a brief, rapid-fire stream of Roma, then add at the
end of it, as if in translation, “Fucking hell.” He got to his feet
and marched off as fast as he had come. “Mama! Fetch Mama
Luna!”
Laurie
drifted. He’d been propping himself on his arms, but when the
softening earth rolled itself up like a warm wave to meet him, he
felt he couldn’t resist it. He saw, through a blurring veil, that
as soon as he was prone, Zaga gave up her assault and sat herself
down beside him, as if on guard. He closed his eyes.
Rustling robes and a faint chiming, as if of the little gold
coins that Sasha had told him were called galbi. He felt a dry grasp close on
his wrist, dry, warm fingers push back his hair. A faint scent of
apricots reached him. An exchange of Romani, not loud but urgent,
the voice he could just distinguish as Mama Luna’s giving what
sounded like a string of commands. Laurie tried to take an
interest, but it didn’t seem to concern him anymore. Nothing
did.
The last
thing that held him out of the pit was another rush of footsteps,
light and fast. Another grip on him—sweet, familiar, cold with
shock. An embrace that closed and lifted him up off the earth. “Oh,
my God. Laurie! Laurie!”
* *
*
He could
not pinpoint a moment of waking. In a way, he felt as if he had
always been here—lying on his side in a room he slowly worked out
was the bedroom of Sasha’s caravan. The bed, a small double, was
covered by two blankets and an unzipped sleeping bag. At the moment
these were turned down. Laurie’s shirt was tucked up to expose the
left side of his rib cage. He wondered if he should tell Mama Luna,
who was perched like a gaudy sparrow on the bed beside him, of his
return to awareness. Certainly he should tell Sasha, kneeling in
the tiny gap between the bed and wall, watching with one hand
clamped tight to his mouth, his dark eyes bleak with
horror.
He
couldn’t—not just yet. The old woman’s palm was pressed flat to his
ribs. She was exerting a pressure which, while he somehow knew it
was good, diagnostic, and would not harm him, was at the same time
imposing on him such extraordinary pain that, if he opened his
mouth, he would wail like a child. And he’d made enough of a fool
of himself already. He had a vague memory that Gunari had picked
him off the ground and carried him here. He concentrated on
breathing and keeping silent.
The old
woman finished her probing and lifted her hand after a little
caress, as if to tell him she was sorry. She looked at Sasha. “He’s
hurt inside, chiavala.”
Sasha
took his hand from his mouth. “Christ. You mean like internal
injuries? I told you we should have called an
ambulance.”
“No. No, not like that. Inside. People like him don’t heal fast
in the places where they trust. You must be careful of
him.”
“I will. I’ll do anything to help him.”
“You don’t understand. Careful of yourself around him, Sasha.
Dadro shee mulo.”
“What? He’d never hurt me.” Sasha swallowed audibly, and Laurie
tried once more to get enough safe breath past his larynx for a
reassuring sound, but it wasn’t going to happen yet. “And I know
his bloody father is death. He’s nearly killed him
tonight.”
“No. Balame will live a long time. The ribs are cracked, not
broken. I can treat him here, good as in hospital
anyway.”
“Okay. What about his face?”
“Oh, face.” Laurie felt the thin mattress rock as the old lady
emitted a short chuckle. “Lovely again soon enough. No harm to the
skull or eyes. Very well—poultice for ribs, arnica for face. And
now he’s awake, darozha
for all that pain he thinks he’s hiding. English
boy, why don’t you cry out? You think I don’t know?”
“Is he awake?” Sasha leaned toward him, reaching out to brush
his the hair from his brow. “Laurie? No, he’s still…” But Laurie,
for whom being seen through amounted suddenly to permission,
flinched back, buried his face in the pillow, and howled. He shot
out a hand, blindly groping, and felt Sasha seize it. Sasha’s other
hand went into his hair. Laurie felt his warm breath on his cheek.
“Laurie, it’s okay. You don’t have to hide.” But Laurie did.
Drilled from infancy to put a stone mask over pain, he could not
just put it aside, and after a moment he sensed Sasha accept this
and lean over him, shielding. “All right. I’ll hide
you.”
“Good,” Mama Luna said. “Good, keep him still there.” He felt
her weight shift. A few seconds later, a wet heat landed on his
exposed ribs, as if she had dropped boiling mud on him. The heat
was briefly unbearable. He convulsed under it and felt himself
restrained by a grip stronger even than Sasha’s, shoulder and hip.
“No. Lie still, balame. Let it do its work.”
Christ,
what was it? Lava, it felt like, consuming his side in three bites
as more of it landed on him. Aware he must be crushing bones in
Sasha’s hand, he tried to loosen his grip but could not; Sasha was
holding him more fiercely still. He heard his own breath coming and
going in anguished rasps—then, abruptly, the fist in his lungs
unlocked. It was as if his rib cage had relaxed enough for him to
get air into it for the first time in hours, and the heat, instead
of boiling his skin off him, became a distraction from the pain. He
sucked in an enormous breath. He’d been slowly suffocating—not just
from the blow but the memory of getting it, as if the old man’s
fist had remained buried in his side. “Good,” the old woman crooned
again. “Good. Let it work.”
The
substance seemed to be drying on his skin. Laurie heard it
crackling, like mud in the sun, imagined cracks as deep as Giant’s
Causeway appearing in it, down through his insignificant flesh and
into the heart of the earth. He breathed and breathed, and the pain
became bearable. Slowly he returned to himself—became properly
aware of his surroundings, of the fact that he was on his side in a
gypsy caravan and showing his rescuers very little appreciation.
Breathed again—so deep that the gathered mass on his side, only
warm now, seemed to break apart and fall away from him.
“Sasha,” he whispered and kissed the hand still clenched on
his. He got his head up out of the pillow. “Mama Luna, I’m so
sorry.”