The Blind Light

by Stuart Evers

  She’d left the room, taken the stairs quickly. In the bedroom, she packed the small trolley suitcase, the one that matched his, the pair that fitted snug in the boot, side by side. She opened drawers and threw in underwear, a pair of jeans, some soft trousers, some thin summer T-shirts, a fleece: a job Robin usually did, the clothes neatly folded, avoiding all wrinkles.

  Someone – who was that? – once told her he was fascinated by the act of dressing. To think, he’d said, everyone gives the world such signifiers, such insight into their lives, and each day such a decision taken without due thought or consideration. Before Robin and her, this man. Tony. No, Toby. From Brighton, but moored up in the North, stranded there, so he said. Always wore the same suit jacket, the buttons hanging off, clacking at the cuffs. If I gave a fuck about how I presented, he’d said, looking with disdain at her carefully worn Mod dress, I’d never leave the house.

  Presenting now in pyjamas, the tartan ones bought for her birthday, sitting in the empty farmhouse, leaving a message for Robin. As though the years having not passed, or passed in an altogether different fashion: the farmer’s wife, a toiler of the land. She went upstairs, showered, dressed, sat in her old room, the space angling back, reforming to its old appointment, the light adjusting. Scrubbed of memory; the room, and herself. Hard to recall what was real and what imagined; the depths of the passions and the thresh of hormones. In one of Lissa’s pieces Neka had read, she’d written that she distrusted anyone who harked back to their teenage years, anyone who would gladly repeat them. A bullseye that. Bad enough they existed at all, without the threat of them happening again.

  She would see Thomas, she would see Carter. This was the deal Nate had brokered with her. Long emails over which they had formulated a plan; emails in which she noticed the colour of therapy, its ripeness rising up from the screen. Nate had not used the word closure but it was close at hand. She could not imagine him on the same relaxed chairs she’d sat in, sometime late in her twenties. The long sessions. She wondered if Nate had used the same obscurantism, the same evasion with his therapist as she had. Those hours of terror. No one to tell that to. No one to ever know. Not wanting to talk of it, not wanting ever to think of it. There were dreams. Of course. Event dreams. But coped with, expected, easily displaced. Dreams of Thomas too, of Kate Bush and Cathy and Heathcliff chanting liar, chanting fantasist as Thomas put his hand into his unzipped slacks.

  Outside, a mobility taxi arrived, the backend bulbous, an oversized estate. She watched Nate dash from the passenger side, the rear door opening on its own, a ramp extending out to the ground. He bent himself inside the space, came out backwards, pulling the chair down the ramp. The wheelchair bumped and fluked on the pitted ground, spat stones out from under the tyres. Nate held open the door, kept it open with his leg, contorting himself to push her through. Neka stood and took quick steps down to the kitchen, filled a kettle as she heard the struggle through the door. I should get a ramp, she heard Nate say, next time I’ll fit a ramp, and Neka set the kettle on the stove, sat down at the table as he pushed the chair into the kitchen.

  In emails, Nate had warned her about their mother, but Neka was wary of elaboration, of sickness-inflation. When Nate had written that she looked like a skeleton dripping skin, she thought Nate might have read that somewhere; but that was how she looked: cadaverous, pumpkin-carved skin, the shade of pistachio ice cream, gobble-gobble folds of skin beneath her chin. Her eyes liquid light now, like a blue rinse grown out to a dove grey. The stroke had given her face a slant, her mouth hanging open on one side, drool below some angry hairs, unplucked and defiantly dark.

  Not drool but tears, Neka saw that now. A beckon of the hand, and Neka knelt by the chair, a hand grabbing hers, surprising strength and rapidity, a pulling in close. A kiss from the unplucked lip, a kiss on the cheek, on any flesh she could find.

  ‘You’re here,’ her mother said. Not clearly, not without a certain amount of translation, but understandable enough. Face tooth and twist, but something not quite undimmed.

  ‘Never thought it,’ she said. ‘Merch hardd.’

  Crying without effort now, just a stream of tears, another incontinence.

  ‘I missed you,’ her mother said. ‘Wedi dy golli ers Cymaint.’

  And somehow a laugh, a stutter of the mouth. A certain laugh though, gaiety, levity. Hand gripping tight on her arm, keeping hold, as though she might spring up and fly the coop.

  ‘She’s been speaking a lot of Welsh,’ Nate said. ‘Sometimes it goes on all day.’

  ‘He used to understand,’ her mother said, nodding to Nate. ‘Do you understand, cariad?’

  Neka nodded.

  ‘Da,’ her mother said. ‘Da iawn.’

  ‘Tea?’ Neka said.

  ‘Yes,’ Nate said. ‘Tea.’

  2

  First the grief and then the rush; the rush turning to stumbles, and then to falls. It was too much for Nate, she knew that. Too much for Nate, the farm and everything, as well as looking after his mother. He tried his best, but there was no choice. She got lost once in the field, was looking for Harris, his long-dead dog. She burned her hand taking a roast from the oven. A residential home. Safe for them both.

  She’d kissed Ray. Just once, and just quickly. She blamed that. She was sure that was it. Never the same after that kiss. A spell broken and not in the right way. Cursed from the pit, after that. She began to see God. He looked like her father. She saw the devil. He looked like Old Nick. The nightmares starting then. At Daphne’s funeral, wearing an old gown of hers, a long black number, Carter there and Carter broken, almost as broken as she. Nate holding her up, fetching her drinks, the champagne Daph reserved for apocalypse. Looking out for her in the big house, waiting for her to whisk her away, take some time just the two of them.

  Not the kiss, but the death of Daphne. Knew it was something. One of two. Which the more likely? In the night, Old Nick talked of books, of sex; in the mirror she saw the young Drum and Carter, dressed in their fatigues, drinking black and tan, her pouring the drinks, her father there, hale and gin-soused; her mother scolding Old Nick for his questions. The bite of Annie at her breast, the nip of Nate as he pinched her in anger.

  None of this today. Today, coast clear, skies cloudless, waking at the home and refreshed, a good sleep, unmet with dreams and the tea in the beaker, the little sippy cup, the woman who looked like Bridget from Dagenham some days and some days not, handing her the cup and saying Nate would be there soon. A day out today, a day out, always saying things twice, this sometime Bridget, a repeat just to be certain she understood, which Gwen always did, even if she liked to reply in Welsh to keep her father happy.

  Oh, Annie. There now, old Annie, young Annie, unchanged and changed. In the kitchen taking a cup of tea from Nate, stirring a cup of tea in the kitchen. The times she’d thought of that, always over tea, over coffee, the normalcy of that. No grand meeting, no fatted calf, just Typhoo or Mellow Birds. You think of things for so long, and bury those things, they have the texture of reality, the crumb of real biscuit.

  ‘How’s she been?’ her daughter asked Nate, not asking her. Why not ask me? I can speak, can say what needs to be said. Already said all that needs to say, done all that needs to be done. Signed it all over. Power of attorney to them both. And gave them blessing. Gave Annie blessing. To see them together again, sitting at the table, talking amongst themselves. No time having passed, apart from the years in their grey hairs.

  The tears again. Crying again. They were talking of Molly, of Femi. Photographs on telephone screens, a library of lockets, those little devices. Molly wanting to go study in Birmingham, or maybe Leeds. There to study, now what now? Something technical, something scientific. Not from our genes, as if we didn’t know it. Femi to study politics and something else. Something international or something. To change the world that boy. Not knowing himself part-Welsh, part of a part-Scot, a stock of complex ingredients. They passed her the phones, the photographs of Molly, of Femi, th
ose of Femi new to her, Ray having taken few over the last years, his interest waning after the kiss.

  How longed-for that kiss, how quick it over. Had forgotten almost what a kiss of passion tasted like, how it presented in the mouth. Odd and greasy, it turned out. The years had dulled the senses, depopulated the synapses. And that had felt like a deeper transgression, the sudden knowledge this should have happened when they still had some fire in the blood, some heyday left. She could see that in Ray’s face, in the tenderness of the kiss, flagging back the past, the moments he’d not lifted his head and just kissed her, taken her to his bed.

  The kiss was underwhelming, but with the sure sense that, had the years rolled back, the bodies become harder, taller, straighter, the kiss would have undone them both. And so, proved her right; proved that the spell would have been a noxious one. But afterwards, again, what would that matter? She hadn’t needed to elope. She hadn’t needed to leave the children. She could just have done what she wanted and kept it a secret. What harm would have been done? Had Drum found out, he would have taken her back. He would have punished her every day for it, but she would not have lost him.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Thomas?’ Gwen said.

  The two of them looked at her. Ah, still the capacity to stop them both still. A mother’s knack; a barmaid’s knack. One of the two.

  ‘I saw him once in London,’ Annie said. ‘Walking up the road, on his mobile phone. One of the big ones. I wanted to kill him.’

  Gwen nodded.

  ‘He was good to Daphne,’ Gwen said. ‘Always there, no matter what.’

  Oh, the unintended needle, the spite of that. I haven’t forgotten what you said, Anneka. The last time. It still stings, that, apology or no.

  ‘He’s got a young family now,’ Gwen said. ‘Must be six and ten, something like that.’

  ‘I know,’ Annie said. ‘Nate told me. Wife’s the same age as his eldest.’

  ‘You exaggerate,’ she said. ‘In her forties, isn’t she, Ray?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Nate said, ignoring that she’d called him by the wrong name. The slips sometimes, the slips and the downward spirals. They might not have noticed. How much has she given away already? How loose her lips?

  Annie looked at her phone. Her daughter in that cocked head, that expression, it all comes back, the tics, the smirks, the smiles. Nothing lost, nothing gone; all still there. The same despite it all, the same person beneath the aged skin and the grey-haired crown. Nothing changing.

  ‘We should go,’ Annie said.

  No response to this; from Nate, from Gwen: nothing. In charge now, Annie, and Gwen glad of that. Glad it would soon be over, glad it was coming to a head. She saw Ray sometimes, sometimes Drum, mostly Drum, always really Drum. To love and love so long and to not know how that love could be surmised, how it could be expressed, how it could follow a natural course of action. Somehow they’d been together that whole time, and not yet together, but bound, snared somehow, a lash around the legs, pulled tight. How it felt now to be unyoked. To be able to do what he was unable to do. It was not a betrayal. No, it was not that.

  She’d signed over the power of attorney. She trusted Nate, she trusted Annie. What they wanted was more important than Drum’s promise to Carter. Femi was more important. Molly was more important. The farm was theirs. It did not belong to a promise that had nothing in writing; it did not belong to them. It belonged to Nate, and to Annie, and to their children. I’m sorry, Drum, my love. I know you promised, but such promises are no longer contracts.

  3

  They did not use the side door, the back door, the usual entrances and exits. Anneka walked ahead as Nate pushed Gwen in her chair, the heat up and sweat on his back; Anneka wearing sunglasses, large-rimmed with gold at the hinges and temples. They were delegation and welcome party, a tote bag over Anneka’s shoulder containing a bottle of wine and a collection of papers. Advancing with smiles, with casual, mid-morning, amble.

  There were three possibilities: Thomas would answer the door; Thomas’s wife would answer the door or Carter would be there to greet them. Anneka pressed the doorbell. A choice of three. Whoever opened the door, Anneka in charge from that moment.

  Nate set the brake on Gwen’s chair, looked up to the gables, the fresh paintwork. Once, Nate had imagined himself living there, renting it from the Carters, moving in with Molly and Carlie. Had never even asked the price, Nate knowing he could never afford it. Contented with doing the odd jobs there, taking the work from the management company, Carter having recommended him. Job over now. Thomas come to take the big house back, to settle in the seat of his ancestors, ‘There to semi-retire, to look once again on the landscape of his youth –’ this in the email to Nate terminating his employ – ‘to show that landscape to my children who have only ever gazed on the cast-iron of New York’s SoHo. I’m coming home to begin again, to survey the lands my forebears have cultivated over centuries.’

  Nate felt bilious, shaken, as though on comedown, a strange memory that, the shivers, the run and hammer of the heart, the sense of death coming then retreating, pulling out at last moment. You put your faith in people, this what happens.

  4

  Neka rang the doorbell, the sound deep and long in the echoing hall. She’d seen him on the street, yes; she thought she’d seen him on the street. What were the chances of that? How long the odds? Not so long, walking in the financial district around lunchtime, meeting up with a friend who had promised some help for the children’s centre, always a chance of seeing him. Had not wanted to kill him, had not even considered it, whatever it was she told her mother. You learn to blot, to blank.

  Seeing him had not summoned up the past, had not raised ghosts. She’d thought instead how foolish the new mobile phones were, the size and weight of them. Thinking they would never catch on, who would want to be constantly found? That what she remembered. A glance in his direction, a lowering of the eyes, thinking the word Yuppie; though she did not know, exactly, what it meant.

  Scrabbling sounds down the hallway, a dog sound, claws on stone, on parquet. So many locks unlocked, the pulling back of bolts, the releasing of chains. The door opened and a woman there. Long black hair, ironed straight, an NYU sweatshirt, skinny denims.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said, looking beyond Neka, to Nate, to her mother. The accent American, pure television, pure the movies. Looked something like her at the same age, Neka thought. Like an American actor playing her for the US market.

  ‘You must be Kim,’ Neka said. ‘Lovely to meet you. We’re here to see Tommy and Uncle Jim.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘They’re in the kitchen. I’ll go—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Neka said. ‘We know where the kitchen is.’

  Neka walked over the threshold, the times she’d done so in dreams. The walls as they were then, not as they were now. Spaces where portraits and landscapes had once hung, test swatches of paint over the wallpaper. Coats on the newel of the staircase, shoes by the door, but nothing else, everything removed, even the stair-runner carpet, ripped out, bare boards below.

  ‘We’ve got the designers coming next week,’ Kim said to Nate and to Gwen. ‘Sorry for all the mess. You must be Nathan and Gwen.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nate said. ‘We said to Thomas we’d stop by.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kim said. ‘Tom did say you’d pop in. Again, sorry for all the mess.’

  Just a friendly pop round. Just a welcome back, Tommy. Just a hello to Carter. No mention of her. She had insisted Nate say nothing of her coming.

  5

  Gwen watched Annie walk the hallway, looking up, looking down. Daphne disappeared in the hallway, all of her gone. Carter and Daphne, erased now, colour schemes Daph would never have countenanced bringing the house mewling into a century already older than anyone ever expected.

  How many years ago, standing where she was sitting now, on the welcome mat, not daring to move from its pitch. Not a different life, a different world.

>   ‘I used to love this hallway,’ Gwen said. ‘It was Daphne’s favourite part of the house.’

  ‘It’s so dramatic, isn’t it?’ Kim said. ‘I just love it. When Tom showed me the pictures, I couldn’t quite believe it. Like something out of Downton Abbey.’

  Kim laughed and in the laugh, Gwen heard the jangle of excitement, of a world newly opened; some wayward dream of freedom and a different kind of life. Something away from what she knew, something safe and permanent and with the weight of history behind it.

  ‘Where are all the pictures?’ Gwen said.

  ‘In storage,’ she said. ‘We’re going to see what works and what doesn’t.’

  ‘Very wise,’ Gwen said.

  6

  Carter’s voice was old now, funny how the voice ages, becomes more querulous through the years, less sonorous. He was talking politics with Tommy; everyone at the time talking politics, everyone talking with the same level of knowledge and prejudice, the same level of biased prediction. At home, Robin and Femi perhaps doing the same thing, working through the same issues, saying variants on the same theme, from opposed positions. Country supposedly divided, but brought together in constant argument.

  Neka waited before coming in, waited until flanked by Nate and her mother. You get one entrance. You get one go around. The house was cool but she felt clammy, dirt-streaked, stinking; her as the ill-wind, wafting in, turning filth. No matter the preparation, no matter how calm then, now pulsed with nerves, a slow slip of sweat running down from her armpit. She sneaked past Nate and entered the kitchen. The two men looked up from their coffee cups.