In transit
Mary Malone catches the number 310 bus for Winchester at three o'clock. She takes a seat half-way back on the right hand side. The scientist in her knows that this will give her the smoothest possible ride.
The bus (actually, it is called a coach, in an attempt to hearken back to the golden age of stagecoaches and posthorns. In practice, this means upholstered seats with high backs) grinds out of Gloucester Green coach station and heads for the Oxford ring road and the A34 dual carriageway south. It left Bradford at quarter past seven this morning and, although it is not exactly filthy, an undergrowth of discarded food wrappers and newspapers has accumulated beneath the seats and in the aisle.
Mary has the seat to herself. On the other side, a young couple are wrapped in each other's arms. Some lines from an old song pass through Mary's head:
"Cathy, I'm lost," I said,
Though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching, and I don't know why."*
She smiles to herself. Perhaps the song had some special significance to her, once upon a time.
The bus feels like a fairground ride as it follows the A34 in its swoops and dives over the undulating West Berkshire Downs. Mary keeps an eye on her bag, which is wedged into the rack over the seat opposite.
She has told her supervisor at Sainsbury's that her aunt Siobhan in Clonmel has been taken sick, and she must go to her. Mary is a good employee, so she has been granted a week's unpaid leave. As the bus pulls into Newbury, her mind goes back over the note and the package that she received yesterday:
Dear Mary,
I know we swore we'd never speak to each other again, but this is desperate. I need your help badly.
The men have come back. I think they're the same men who came before. I can't be sure. They're scaring my mother.
I've run away. I'm not saying where.
Mary, Mrs Cooper my old piano teacher died last year. I've nobody else to ask. When I phone home, nobody answers. Please can you go to Winchester and make sure that mum is alright.
I've put the front door key in this bag. You know what the other things are. Please keep them safe.
Please help. I'm relying on you. Please.
Will
Mary remembers the last time she saw Will; after that final argument. It was the same argument as ever, of course.
The Knife. It had come between them, as she might have known it would. She could see, she could feel, Will's anguish and misery. She wished that she could help him. But she knew, with a conviction that matched Will's determination, that she would not, could not, help him to re-forge the Subtle Knife. They had argued endlessly over it. Will had an endless list of good reasons why the Knife should be made whole once more. Great, humanitarian reasons; well-intended. Think of the good that he could do with it!
But behind all the reasons that Will put to her, she knew that there was but one, overriding, reason. And although Mary knew that she was the unwitting catalyst that had ignited Will and Lyra's love, she also knew that the cost of reuniting them would always be too great. So she denied him, though it broke her heart. She left his house that August evening with his angry voice still sounding in her ears: 'Go away! Fuck off, you old cow! Go on, get lost!' She had never heard him swear before. His mother stood behind him at the door, shaking her head, terrified by this outburst of passion in her son.
And now Will has given it to her. The shards of the Subtle Knife are packed in her bag, still in the Jiffy bag that Will sent her from London – for she has read the postmark – together with a change of clothing.
She cannot imagine why she has brought them with her.
The bus drops her off at twenty minutes past four by the statue of King Alfred in the centre of Winchester, not far from the cathedral. It is already twilight, this grey January day, and by the time she reaches Will's house the street lights are on. Mary braces herself inwardly, and opens the front door with the key that Will has sent to her. She has feared that she will be met by a terrible faecal stench as she enters the hall; or that she will find Elaine Parry's dead body in the kitchen. But the house is warm and only a little musty, although she has to press hard on the door to push aside the pile of letters, junk mail and copies of the Daily Telegraph that have built up behind it.
'Mrs Parry? Elaine?' she calls. There is no answer. Mary turns on the hall light. The house is tidy but has clearly not been dusted or vacuumed recently. There is nobody in the dining-room or kitchen, so she looks in the sitting-room.
Elaine Parry is there on the sofa, facing the fire. She is shockingly emaciated. She reminds Mary of the pictures that the missionary nuns brought back from Africa, when she was a nun herself. Mary guesses that she has had nothing to eat for several days, maybe weeks. A teapot and cup are on the table beside her. They are free from mould, so Mary supposes that Elaine has been keeping herself alive on cups of tea. She saw no milk bottles at the front of the house. The milkman must deliver to the side door.
Mary sits on the sofa next to Elaine. She speaks softly to her, aware that she is very weak. Had the gas central heating not been working, the scientist inside Mary says, Elaine would have died of hypothermia by now.
'Elaine, it's Mary. Are you all right?'
'John? Will? Is that you? Quickly, Thunderbirds will be on soon! You don't want to miss it!' Elaine's voice is scarcely audible.
First things first. Mary goes to the kitchen and switches on the kettle. Then she dials 999. The emergency services promise that they will get an ambulance to her within half an hour. Mary has only just made the tea, when there is a ring at the door. The ambulance has been even quicker than promised. Mary helps the paramedics carry Elaine to the ambulance. She notices that it has come from a private hospital. Privatisation, indeed! Can't the National Health Service even manage to provide a decent ambulance service any more? Why must everything be outsourced; sold off to the highest bidder? Mary gets into the back of the ambulance with Elaine, bag in hand. She will accompany her to hospital. Elaine will need a friend there.
Ten minutes later, the ambulance from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital arrives at the door of Elaine Parry's house. The driver knocks at the door, but there is no answer. He calls through the letterbox. No reply. Oh well, he has other calls to make tonight. He will report this hoax call to his supervisor. Mrs Parry will get a stiff letter and maybe a court summons. People should know better than to go around wasting the time of the already overstretched ambulance service.
Mary holds Elaine Parry's hand as the private ambulance threads its way through the housing estate and onto the main road out of Winchester.
*America, by Paul Simon. Quoted without permission.