Page 115 of People In Love
Or be extremely careful on ladders, Nora suggests.
Will I have seven years’ bad luck, now?
That’s broken mirrors, Nora says. It’s walking under a ladder that’s bad.
Falling off one doesn’t seem the best plan, either.
Not when you ignore the blinding head pain that comes afterwards.
It wasn’t blinding, Robin reasons. My elbow hurt more, at the time, and the headache was sort of manageable, until yesterday. I just thought it was approaching forty, maybe. Or the wedding, or work. The whole Bren debacle, adding a bit of undue stress.
A bit of undue subdural haematoma, Nora says.
Those are big words for an implausibly big day, Robin says, and she agrees. He strokes her hair as if she is the one who needs soothing, here. She lies in his arms and thinks he will soon slip into sleep, waits for his breathing to change.
Speaking of ladders, she whispers, and Robin says mm?
Do you remember that personality test, she says, with the ladder and the cube and the – horse, they say, in unison, yeah, Robin says, of course.
What was your ladder like, again?
Robin tilts his head on the pillow. He’s not even bandaged with gauze; looks normal, apart from the shaved patch on his skull.
It was a rope ladder, he says. Hanging through a hole in the ceiling.
Nora makes a light noise, an ah, yes.
What do you think that means?
That I’m a humble sort of chap, Robin says. Rickety, a bit bungling, maybe, on first meeting. But sturdier than I look.
Small laugh from her, then. Swell of love.
But I think the hole in the ceiling’s important, Robin says. It’s a ladder that reaches into another room. Beyond what we can see.
He keeps combing through her hair with his hand. Soft, repetitive. Like he’s hoping it might send her to sleep.
What’s in the other room, she asks him.
Guess we’ll find out, he says, his body warm and solid against hers. They drift off, soon after, dreams flickering to the bleep of machines. It is not how they’d envisioned spending their wedding night, although it is not really their wedding night, not yet, a ceremony has not happened, after all, but when they stir at four in the morning, Robin murmurs hey, Nora.
And he proposes something, right then. It is simple and they are alone and filled up with the heady sudden rightness of it and there is a hospital chapel down the hall and they are both dressed for the occasion, or at least, he is after she helps button his shirt.
Are you okay to walk, she asks him, and he says absolutely. That the doctor said motor function should be normal. See?
So they walk to the door. Their passports, which she’d had with her for the registry office, still stowed in her dress pockets. Out the door, down the hall, Robin holding on to her arm. Something old, she says, nodding at his brogues, which of course he had thought to put on the previous morning, even though he’d been in incomparable pain. Something new?
Your dress?
Great. And something borrowed, and blue?
You have your blue eye, Robin says, as they follow the signs for the chapel. Daybreak through the window, burnt orange staining the cloud. They turn a corner and pass a small waiting room, and the colour of the dawn is matched by the red of someone’s hair, a guy in a white T-shirt, cargo trousers and hiking boots, sitting on his phone at half four in the morning, a coffee cup, lidless, by his foot.
Robin sees him before Nora does. Stops walking, so that she glances up at him with concern, only for him to nod in Bren’s direction. And as she looks over, Bren looks up, too, and then he says oh. Hi.
I thought you went home, Nora says.
I came back, Bren says, with a shrug. In case you needed anything.
