Entanglement. Katy Mahood
pie and chips and remembered that first sharp moment when he’d seen her, flushed and stuttering because she’d spilt his drink. He’d known, of course, the biology of his need: the pheromones and oxytocin, the elemental programming that sustained the human race. And yet, somehow, he’d understood in that first rush of desire the same truth that he saw now with this baby; that – expedient as they were – these basic functions of human life were each a kind of a miracle.
‘John? Aren’t you going to say something?’
He’d felt the twang of anxiety in Stella’s voice and looking up he’d been perplexed to see tears in her eyes. He’d asked her what was wrong and when she’d answered he had laughed, amused by how illogical she could be. Of course they would get married – this was their own little miracle! They’d kissed across the table, certain that life was good.
But now in Finchley, it all felt far from miraculous. Around the table, John tried to catch his father’s eye, but both his parents were concentrating hard on the remains of their Sunday roast.
‘So you see, Mum, Dad, we didn’t want a fuss.’
His mother looked up, smiling with her lips pressed into a tight line. ‘Yes, darling. We understand.’
But Stella could hear their disapproval in the silence on either side of what they said. She turned words over in her head. At least tell us you’re angry! But she knew she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to say them aloud.
John’s father coughed, looking at each of them in turn as if to signal that the wedding conversation was at an end. ‘What about the bomb near you, then?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say, but I don’t even get shocked by that sort of thing any more.’
It was true, Stella thought. There had been so many bombs going off over the past few years, she too had begun to feel immune to the horror until she’d stood up close to that unnatural scene of charred walls and blown-out windows and bloodied survivors.
John nodded at his father, accepting the change of direction. ‘It was awful. Like a war zone, but just there on our doorstep. And those people – do you remember, Stella, that guy they brought out?’
Stella tried to blink away the image of the man as he lay on the ground, his eyes fixed on hers from his blood-streaked face.
‘Oh, how horrible!’ John’s mother clasped her hands together.
Stella turned to her new mother-in-law. ‘It was horrific, Mrs Greenwood.’
She’d expected to be corrected, It’s ‘Mum’ now, Stella. But the older woman said nothing as she gathered their plates and left the room. Stella noticed that the feeling in the room had changed again.
John’s father leaned forward. ‘We don’t have money, you know, Stella. There’s no gold to dig here.’
John blinked, unsure if he’d imagined the words. But Stella’s flushed cheeks and her tightening grip around his wrist told him he had not.
‘Mr Greenwood—’ Stella began, a waver in her voice.
But John interrupted. ‘Dad! Where did that come from? What are you thinking?’
His father scowled. ‘What am I thinking? What are you thinking? Knocking up a girl you hardly know, getting married on the sly, breaking your mother’s heart while you’re at it, it’s—’
‘Stop! Please.’ Stella stood up. ‘John, I’m going to go—’
John’s mother had brought in a trifle from the kitchen. ‘Won’t you stay for dessert?’ she asked Stella, who laughed despite herself.
‘Oh, no, we’d better not. Thanks very much for a lovely lunch.’
The words seemed to exist in a world apart from the strange chaos that her body had become; it was as if she were reading them off a card. John kissed his mother’s cheek, then took Stella’s arm and led her out of the house.
‘Well,’ he said as they walked to the Tube, ‘that could have been a lot worse.’
Stella looked at him and he broke into a wide grin. She punched him on the arm, not quite hard enough to hurt.
‘You utter bastard,’ she said and they both started to laugh.
18 November 1977
More than a month after the papers and almost all of London had forgotten the attack, Charlie stood in an unfamiliar church and waited to bury his sister. Ben was in the front row, weeping into his hands, which were mottled red and white like raw meat. But for those huge hands, it was almost possible for Charlie to feel sorry for him. At the front of the church, the priest mumbled the mass, his voice almost inaudible except for the occasional sudden spike in volume that seemed to take him by surprise every time it happened. Charlie stared at the wooden box with his sister inside. It baffled him that all that life could just have vanished. Vaguely, he recalled that energy could not be destroyed, only transferred. So where had Annie gone? It was impossible to believe that she had simply ceased to be, however unknowable the alternative.
His mother leaned against him, shell-like and smelling of drink. Charlie shifted in his seat. Beth had offered to come back, but he’d told her she should stay in France; in part because he wanted her to finish the final days of her course, but mostly because he was afraid of the scene that his mother would make at the funeral. But when he’d met his mother at the Tube at Kilburn Park he’d realised there was nothing left to be afraid of: she had become a shadow of a woman. The figure from his childhood had gone. The flashes of glory, the fury and despair were all just memories now.
The priest was flicking arcs of holy water across the casket. Ben shuddered, blew his nose into a large grey hanky and took a surreptitious swig from a small brown hipflask.
The priest continued: ‘… but to command thy holy angels to receive it, and to bear it into paradise; that as it has believed and hoped in thee it may be delivered from the pains of hell and inherit eternal life through Christ our Lord. Amen.’ His final words reached a wild crescendo and Charlie flinched as he muttered ‘Amen’ along with everyone else.
The pub afterwards was packed with black-clad family members and nervous-looking friends of Annie, awed by their first funeral, uncertain how to behave. Charlie watched as Ben shook their hands, accepting the drinks pressed into his, as his eyes grew vacant and his mouth set hard. The voices grew louder and blurred with drink so that the room seemed to become a singular bellow, a bright and clanking hub of life.
A hand fell heavily on his shoulder and Charlie turned. Ben’s eyes were small, his face flushed and cruel and when he started talking it seemed as though he was already halfway through a conversation.
‘… but Charlie, right, the thing I want to know is, yeah, why was she even in that pub on our fuckin’ wedding night? I was entitled to a few drinks with my mates, y’know? But then she’s gone and I says to Roddie, “Where’s Annie got to?” and Roddie was giving it all “You’ve had too much mate” and “I think it’s time we got you home”, so I smacked him – ahaha! – I mean, for fuck’s sake, it was my wedding, yeah? And then someone nuts me and the next thing I know I’m in a police cell on the Edgware Road an’ it’s all chaos cos some terrorist fuckers have bombed a pub. But what I want to know is why was she at that fuckin’ pub?’
Charlie winced as the hand gripped tighter. Ben’s face was damp with sweat and a streak of snot glazed his upper lip. Three drinks in, Charlie was less drunk than Ben, but he wasn’t sober. He felt the thud of his blood through his body as he listened to his dead sister’s husband slur and rant. As gently as he could, he lifted Ben’s hand from his shoulder. He tried to look his brother-in-law in the eye but Ben’s gaze was hooded and unfocused.
‘Ben, she’s gone. It makes sense that you’re