Shelter
by Catherine Binnie

The wind had picked up, and the thin metal of the bus stop complained as gusts shouldered against it. The dank sky had turned to purple ink, and streetlamps now flickered, punctuating the cold pavement with triangles of orange. The electronic board blinked: next bus due 8 mins. It had been eight minutes for the last half hour. William stood, eyes shut, oblivious to the handfuls of icy rain slicing his ankles. What was left of his mobile skittered around his feet. He glanced down—had he dropped it? Or thrown it? He couldn’t remember. He lowered himself to the ground, knees folding, and tried to put it together again. The tiny pieces of plastic and metal, intricate and clever, teased his shaking hands, jumping from finger to thumb. William tried once, twice and a third time, before hurling the phone’s casing into the road. The sickening crack as it splintered under the wheels of a car made his stomach heave. He stayed on his hands and knees, his fingers splayed in front of him like he was a sprinter waiting for the starting gun. Their tips whitened as he pushed them against the cold ground. He pushed harder. A procession of headlights covered him in white halogen light. He forced his eyes open and stared into the ugly glare, eyeballs burning; and this was how Sall found him, his bleached face a shock—causing her to slam on the brakes and swerve to a stop just past the bus shelter.

She left the engine running and glanced in the rear view mirror. William, still crouched, his body captured in the brake lights, paid no attention. She waited ten seconds, 45 seconds, a minute, but he made no move towards the car. Her stomach ached with the realisation that she would have to go and get him. She tried to think of reasons why she shouldn’t—it was best not to rush him, he might want to gather his thoughts, compose himself before getting into the car. All of it nonsense, of course. He just didn’t want to know she was there. Simple as that. She took a deep breath and released the door handle, allowing it to open a couple of inches. How had she ended up here? Grief was something best viewed at a distance. Yet here she was; involved. Shoved centre stage in the unfolding of someone else’s tragedy. She pulled the door shut.

In the blurred edges of his vision, William was aware of the car—a silent invitation to the inevitable. His clothes, heavy with rain, stuck to his skin. His mind—desperate not to settle—flicked through thoughts. A jerky cine-film of memories spooled past: Aidan a gummy, grinning squidge of a baby; then a a dungareed toddler, legs pumping furiously on his bright red tricycle; slowly becoming a scowl in the first school uniform; before begging for a kick-around in the garden—face sticky with sweat and orange squash. William tried to count the number of times he’d said no. Too many. His thoughts crackled. Already his son was cast in sepia.

An umbrella. Who thinks of an umbrella at a time like this? she muttered, knowing all too well there wasn’t one in the car. She could switch the light on, of course, but didn’t want to look at her own red-rimmed eyes. She had cried a little on her way and hoped that her skin had now paled. William should not have her own sadness waved under his nose. It wasn’t as if they were even that close. They were neighbours, had been for over ten years, their friendship built around summer barbeques and the occasional coffee, shared niceties on the driveway. It, she, was not built for this. But there has been no one else. Jane’s sister had appeared on her doorstep, face ghostly in the brightness of the security light. There had been an accident, she said. It was Aidan. She was taking Jane to the hospital, but there was no one to collect William. She’d asked Sall if she could pick him up.

“Of course I could,” Sall had replied without thinking, “where is he? I’ll go straight away.”

The sister whispered her thanks and left. Sall let the front door click shut and stood in the cold of the hallway, listening to the gurgling of the radiator and the howl of the wind as it whipped the corners of the house. A good boy. Always ready with a smile. Eighteen years old. Sall realised with a jolt that she had known him, known his face, for over ten years, but they had spoken just a handful of times. She was awkward around children, and steered clear of teenagers. But she had liked him, had listened politely to his mother’s stories about him—the plans, the girlfriend she wasn’t that keen on, his university choices. Sall had even gone as far as to buy him a leaving gift, ready for his first term at university. A dictionary and a corkscrew. She’d thought it summed up the academic life. She had been surprised when Aidan had dropped round, just a few days ago, to say thank you. He had said he thought he’d get more use out of one than the other; they had laughed and said their goodbyes. Don’t work too hard, Sall had said to him, make sure you enjoy yourself. Good luck.

And now. A dread swum in her chest, a dread which forced her to draw her breath and collect her car keys. She put on her coat and her boots, switched on the security alarm, locked the front door—and stepped out into the storm.

William’s fingers finally buckled under the strain, and he collapsed into the sitting position, legs straight in front of him, resting against the bus stop like a rag doll on a bed post. He should go to the car, he knew that, but his legs ignored him, all too aware of how reluctantly he gave himself the order. Jane would be wondering where he was. Frantic in the bleached corridors of A&E. Trying to reach him on his flattened mobile. Wondering how Aidan had got the car keys.

Get up and come to the car. Get. Up. Please don’t make me come and get you, Sall thought, eyes fixed on the rear view mirror. I’ll give him another a minute, she thought, just one more moment, timed by the blinking LED of her car dashboard. 23.34. She would step out at 23.35. Why had she answered the door? Since when did good news ever come calling at that time of night? She hadn’t asked for this part. It didn’t suit her. Others would find it easier—like the women in her office who were adept at the sympathetic ear, the first to start the collections, to organise the flowers, always ready with the tissues and the right words, whilst Sall stood and gaped like a landed fish. She knew they found her strange. Reserved. Her colleagues had pronounced their judgement in not-so-hushed tones, early on. A loner. A habit she had no desire to break.

Three days after Sall celebrated her fourteenth birthday, her mother had begun to die. Even now, forty years later, she could see it all clearly, could watch her mother, yellow and heavy with cancer, ebbing a little every day. Sixty-two days was all it took. During those days her father had paced and raged and waited for Sall to put his tea on the table. The only time she stepped away from her mother’s bed was to make him his bloody tea. Her mother died whilst Sall bent, lost, over a pan of burnt baked beans. After the funeral her father had stood in the kitchen on the dirty lino, one hand gripping the cracked Formica, the other clinging to Sall. The strangeness of his face—contorted and wet, the scratch of stubble and the warm stink of stale sweat—had made her sick. He’d stared at her, his face too close, waiting for tears. There had been none. Not in front of him. She remembered feeling a strange amazement that a life, a life that seemed so important—so certain—could be finished in sixty-two days. That a life could be over in a month, a week, a day, just an hour, one night. She glanced again in the rear view mirror. William was still staring at the traffic. It is better to have loved and lost. She didn’t see how.

A bus shuddered to a stop. It occurred to William that it had been more than eight minutes. Its inhabitants—pallid and floodlit on stained blue seats—stared. A heart attack, they mused. A funny turn. A drunk. The doors hissed open and answering its call, William got to his feet. He would get on the bus to get warmed up, to think, to go around and around, to wake up in a deserted diesel-fumed depot with no idea of how to get home.

“William, where on earth—?” Sall’s voice stopped him, one foot on the bus, one foot on pavement, like a prize mountaineer posing for a shot. He wondered briefly why his next-door neighbour was at his side staring intently, raindrops quivering on the end of her nose.

“Are you getting on or not, mate?”

“He’s not, sorry to hold you up,” Sall replied.

William remained split between bus and ground.

“You gonna get out of the way then or what?” the driver asked.

“Sorry.” William reluctantly stepped down.

They stood side by side for a moment, two disappointed travellers watching longingly as the bus rolled on, leaving them enveloped in a stinging belch of exhaust.

“You’ve heard?” William asked eventually.

“Yes. And I’m so sorry. I’m not sure what to—“she tailed off as he swatted away her words.

“William? We need to go.”’ The tiny puffs of ice made by her breath were pummelled by rainfall.

He shook his head.

“You can’t stay out here, you’ll catch your—“ she stopped herself. “You’ll catch a cold.” Ridiculous thing to say, she thought. Ridiculous, he thought. What does it matter?

“William, please . . .” she couldn’t bring herself to touch his shaking hands.

“I told him I’d get the bus,” he mumbled.

“Sorry?”

He dropped his head and noticed that his shoelaces were undone.

“I told him not to say anything to her.”

“Not to say anything to who?”

“His mother. She didn’t want him to have the car. Too young.”

He shouldn’t be saying this to me, she thought. It’s not my place to hear this.

“I think we should probably get to the hospital now—”

“She said no, you see. I said yes.”

Silence throbbed between them.

“She doesn’t know you let him...?”

“She doesn’t know . . .” his voice cracked and he pressed his hands hard into his eyeballs until the darkness swirled with silver sparks. “She doesn’t know.”

Sall reached out and grasped his wrists, his skin slick with cold. She wrenched his hands from his eyes, and they stood there for a moment, her grip tight, William staring at the pavement.

“William, please. It’s time to go.”

Without looking up he allowed himself to be led to the car with her hand still linked around one of his wrists, his feet dragging one behind the other. To the drivers flashing past, he was the reluctant husband, the recalcitrant schoolboy. Sall opened the passenger door and helped him into the seat, stopped his numb and clumsy hand and fastened the seatbelt.

As she got into the driver’s seat he touched her shoulder. “What will I say to her?”

Sall busied herself with the car’s air vents, the temperature dial, the windscreen wipers. Don’t look him in the eye, she thought. “I don’t know, but Jane will understand. It will be okay.” Her voice shook gently. “I’m sure of it.”

He nodded, and tried a smile.

Catherine Binnie is originally from Llanelli, but now lives in London and Cardiff. She is currently working on her first novel.