Aubade and Requiem

They will ask me where I was when this happened, thought Mira. Some day, if I am blessed with them, my grandchildren, and even my great grandchildren will ask me, and I will tell them I saw it all unfold on a television screen, and that I turned it on just for a bit of background, just for “wallpaper”, and wondered why they were showing a horror film on a news channel at that hour in the morning. She sat transfixed and terrified as those two great towers turned into pillars of flame, and a scar was cut through them that would never heal. She sat and trembled and wept as a glorious autumn day turned into a day that would be remembered for centuries. She was not sure if she could actually hear the sirens or if she only heard them on her TV screen. She didn’t think she was in any actual danger herself, but she knew that thousands were in the most terrible danger, and thousands would not survive that September morning, only just over a year into that new Millennium that had dawned with such brightness and promise, after old barriers had come down.

Tina had phoned her first, as she was on her way to work. Mira wasn’t exactly a mother figure to her, as she was barely old enough and her own mother was still very much alive, but she sometimes turned to her for advice, or just, as she termed it, to vent. And Mira knew that she and Ralf had been having their issues. But when Tina spoke, she was not in a temper. “Mira, I was out of order,” she said, “I was just determined to pick a quarrel and find fault, I said things I shouldn’t have done and didn’t listen to what he had to say. I totally over-reacted to him leaving his laundry lying around rather than putting it in the basket. It’s true what he says. I’m even more of a neat freak than my mother, and that takes some doing!”

Mira knew Tina’s mother, and liked her well enough, but couldn’t disagree with that. She was a tidy woman herself, but Joan took it to extremes. She sometimes thought her husband Hal had the patience of a saint. But she hurriedly reminded herself Joan was a good-hearted woman, and though she was Mira’s confidante, she wasn’t going to start running down her mother. “We’re all made differently,” she said, well aware that it came across as more of a platitude than a masterpiece of diplomacy. “And lots of people get annoyed by laundry lying around.”

“But I said things I shouldn’t have done, Mira.”

There were things Mira knew not to say. She would not say that when both halves of a couple had high-pressure jobs and they didn’t have any domestic help – she knew Hal had suggested a cleaning lady, but Mira had said she much preferred to do her own – then no matter how much you totally approved of women having just the same chances as men, there were going to be some problems and fraught mornings, and not just mornings. And she also knew this wasn’t just about the laundry. Though Tina had inherited her mother’s neat freak tendencies, she could also be very self-aware and realise her own quirks and not necessarily take herself seriously. Only a few months ago she would probably have playfully thrown one of the offending articles at him and it might have landed on his head, and they would both have laughed at how droll he looked and how unimportant it really was.

Though at times it could undeniably be convenient, perhaps it was a shame they worked in the same building, even if it was one of massive proportions. But she said, “Get together for lunch, Tina. And try to make it a longer one, or at least longer than usual. No sandwiches at the desk!”

“I don’t know if it’s that simple, Mira,” Tina sighed.

“I’m sure it isn’t. But it’s no bad start.”

“I guess not. And – I do love him, you know. So very, very much.”

“Sweetheart, nobody would ever doubt that!”

And Mira herself certainly didn’t, but she also knew that in the real world, that wasn’t always necessarily enough.

Ralf phoned ten minutes later. Mira had always got on with him, liking his wry sense of humour and laidback ways, though she could also understand why the latter sometimes got on Tina’s nerves.

“Oh, Mira, it was all just so stupid,” he said, “So stupid and trivial. And I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was just so sarcastic about her treating some laundry lying on the floor as if it was the end of the world or at any rate a major catastrophe. And it was meant as a joke when I said one day she might remember that I like my eggs hard and not runny, even though I do, but I could have fixed my own.”

“Well, you do your fair share in the household,” Mira said, though she couldn’t help remembering that Tina had once said that she could never quite make out if he was willing but genuinely less than competent, or whether the shows of incompetence were a not so subtle attack to get out of doing his fair share.

“And I don’t MEAN to be untidy,” he said, “Truly I don’t, but saying that makes me sound like a spoilt little kid, doesn’t it? Sorry, Mira, I’m putting you in an impossible position with that question.”

“Some folk find it easier than others,” she said, well aware that it came across as a platitude rather than a masterpiece of diplomacy. She wondered whether to tell Ralf that she had already spoken to Tina, but thought better of it. It was for Tina to tell him if she wanted to.

“Why don’t the two of you have lunch together?” she proposed, thinking that if advice were good (and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t) then it did no harm to offer it twice instead of struggling for originality for the sake of it. “Go to the restaurant. At any rate get outside – it’s a lovely day – and take things more at your leisure.”

“Do you think that will help?” he asked, trying hard to sound casual and not succeeding.

“I’m not saying it’s a miracle cure. But I think it will most definitely do no harm.”

“I do love her, Mira. I love her so dearly and can’t bear to think about us splitting up.”

“Anyone can see that, Ralf. Listen, the two of you have lunch together today, and if you like, come round to my place for supper tonight.”

“Yes – yes, thanks, Mira.”

Well, I suppose I should think about making something they both like, thought Mira, when she had put the phone down, reminding herself that Tina couldn’t stand olives and mushrooms, and Ralf couldn’t stand garlic and seafood. But that lunch would come first. She fervently hoped that both of them would be true to their word about making the time to have a proper lunch and a proper chat, and to laugh about the quarrel that morning, and give each other a hug.

And now she sat there, staring at her television screen, and realising that this would a day that would change the world and reverberate down the decades, and she felt the weight and the awfulness of it like a burden that would never leave her shoulders and her soul. But she knew that if anyone asked her why, at that precise moment, she was weeping great heaving sobs, she would have had to reply that it was because two young people, their whole lives before them, who loved each other so very dearly, would not be having lunch together that day, and maybe never again.