Dialogues of the Dead

293 It was a wet murky evening. Faster, I screamed, faster. He just grinned and said, 'Fasten your seat-belt, Sis. It's going to be a bumpy night.' Those were the last words I heard him say. We went round a bend too fast, got into a skid ... it all came back just now when you had to brake . ..' Hat put his arms around her and held her. She leaned into him for a while then straightened up determinedly and pushed him away. 'We went straight into a car coming the other way,' she said in a flat voice, speaking very quickly as if this was something she had to say but wanted to get over. 'There were two people in it. They were both killed. Serge died too. As for me, I remember the skid, and I remember lying there on a pavement - outside a churchyard, would you believe? - looking up at the night sky .. . then I don't recall another thing till I woke up in hospital over a week later.' Hat whistled. 'A week? That must have been heavy damage you took.' 'Yeah. Broken this and that. But it was my head that caused the most concern. Fractured skull, pressure on the brain. They had to operate twice. By the time they got that sorted, the rest of me was just about knitted together.' As she spoke her hand had gone involuntarily to the silver blaze in her hair. Hat reached out and touched it. 'Is that when you got this?' he asked. 'Yes. I was shaved completely bald, of course, but they assured me it would all grow back. Well, it did. Except that for some reason which they explained without explaining their explanation, if you know what I mean, the hair over the scar came out like this. They suggested I should dye it, but I said no.' Why?' asked Hat. 'Because of Serge,' she said flatly. 'Because I hate visiting grave yards, all that morbid crap, but as long as I've got eyes to see myself in the mirror. I'll never forget him.' Hat looked at her with troubled eyes and she said, 'I'm sorry, I'm mucking up our day. I shouldn't have told you any of this, not now anyway. I've never talked about it to anyone else, except Dick.' Even in the midst of her unhappiness and his empathy, some selfish gene felt that as a blow. He said, 'You told Dick?' 'Yes. He's like you, not pushy. Questions are easy to duck, but the weight of non-questions from people you like becomes unbearable. He just listened, and nodded, and said, "That's hard. I know about losing someone young, you're never happy again without recalling they're not there to share your happiness." He's very wise, Dick.' Me too, thought Hat. Wise enough not to let my jealousy show! But he must have looked pretty unhappy because suddenly she smiled broadly and said, 'Hey, it's OK. That little skid back there shook me up a bit, but really, I'm fine now. My own fault for showing off to myself that fast cars don't bother me. Which they don't. And to prove it, let's get going before all those birds head south for the winter.' She stood up, reached down her hand and hauled him to his feet too. He didn't let go of her hand but held it tight and said, 'You're sure? We can easily head back to town, spend the day watching telly or something.' 'I won't ask you to interpret or something,'1 she said. 'No, I promised to twitch and twitch I will, as soon as I get my hand back.' They got back into the car. As they pulled away, Hat said, 'So what did happen to the acting career?' 'Career's putting it a bit strong,' she said. 'Thing was, when I finally got back to normal after about six months, I found it had all gone, all that ambition, all those dreams. I'd lost Serge and now I could see beyond all doubt what a sad pair my parents were. Incidentally, it came out later that the urgent business my father had to attend to that night was banging away with some stage-struck groupie who believed all his name-dropping big-time luwie stories. It wasn't a life I wanted to have anything to do with any more.' He said, 'So this is why you sounded so cynical when you were telling me about your name?' 'About finding out they'd lied about the parts they were playing?