One more look at Vincent, while he’s still here. She slides the sketchbooks she hasn’t touched for months from their hiding place in the wardrobe and sits on the bed, leafing through the pages until she reaches, first, the portraits of Powell and then the studies of Vincent – the different versions of his head – and though her fingertips are icy she feels a flush rise to her cheeks, to her breasts, as she remembers how that day ended.
Oh, the eye, the painted eye, the way she managed to capture that – the love shining from it, love that’s got nothing to do with Vincent Fortune, of course, but her love, reflecting back from that painted surface; her love for Powell so strangely returned, almost as if, yes, absurd though it is, she can allow herself to think it, as if he’d returned to her – his ghost, his essence – returned to her briefly through another man. Before she was able to let him go.
One by one she tears the sheets from the sketchbooks – all the portraits of Powell and all of Vincent – and begins to fold.
He wakes and the grille is black. The electric light casts a dim greyish light. The two guards are strangers; shame he couldn’t have had Bob here at the end, a friendly face. It can’t be more than an hour. And then it will stop. He can feel the beating of his heart; it doesn’t know what’s coming. He feels sorry for his good old heart that’s beat since before he was born, beat faithfully through everything, through Mum’s death when he thought it would break, through thrashings and kissing, through quiet times on the riverbank waiting for a fish, in the trenches, on the battlefield, quietly in his sleep, like the clappers in Doll’s bed: his poor, faithful, unsuspecting heart. He cups a hand to his chest – it’s not his poor heart’s fault, is it? He thinks of Doll, the love of his life. She put on her precious last drops of L’Heure Bleue for him, she touched up her hat, she’s not opening up today, a Friday, out of respect – a Friday, too, that’ll cost her a pretty penny. That must be a sort of love, mustn’t it? A soft spot is a sort of love.
If they’d had a child together at least it would be part of him left behind, a little kiddie to keep on living for him. A girl it would have been, he’s sure of it, a little sister for Kenny. Oh, how Doll would’ve loved a girl. Vince’s blood going round in her veins, her own heart, which was part of him, beating on till God knows when, into the next century if she was lucky. And whatever would the world be like by then?
If there had been a kiddie though, then he wouldn’t be letting this happen. He’d have had to stay alive for her. He can almost see her – very beautiful she’d grow up to be, a credit to Doll, and she’d look after her mum when she was old. But, oh, this is rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. He hears footsteps approaching and he and the two screws all look towards to the door.
They let him keep his face for the last walk, cuffed to a stranger each side, all out of step, lurching along. It’s a long walk and two flights of stairs up. He’s cold. One of the guards, a stranger, smells medicinal. Neither of them say anything, not one friendly word. Then they come to a door with a little group of men standing outside. The doctor, the chaplain, three more. The door’s opened and he’s taken into an empty room. A room with a small dark window – not quite dark, the first grey of dawn – the glass glittering with raindrops.
‘Hands behind your back if you will, Mr Fortune,’ someone says, and it comes to Vince that he could lash out. He could go down fighting. But his hands, icy and damp, go obediently behind him and he feels a strap tighten round his wrists. With his hands pulled back like that, his heart’s a fist punching against his chest and his breath begins to come in gasps. He can stop this. Can he, can he, is it too late now? Is it too late? Something in him begins to fight against himself, but he keeps it down, keeps it in. Oh Christ, but he needs to piss now.
There’s a door in the wall opposite, and now they’re leading him through it into a small chamber in the middle of which is a trapdoor and chalked on the centre, where the two flaps join together, the shape of two feet. Behind the trapdoor is a lever; above the trapdoor a noose. One of the men lifts off the prosthesis, a pug-nosed man whose green eyes linger on the scar. Bare-faced, Vince finds himself struggling as they take him onto the trapdoor, strap his feet together. He’s not ready, not ready. Maybe he should have tried to pray, maybe he does wants to pray. He wants to piss, he says so, he want to piss, he wants to pray, he wants to . . .
‘Make it easy for yourself,’ one of the men says in his ear, that bad smell. Another has man stepped into the room, Vince senses, and he tries to turn, but as he does, the hood goes over his head – whiteness – and he thinks of the vanisher, of stepping in – now you see me, now you don’t – and there’s something round the neck, hard under his left ear, heart going like the clappers, breath all hot against the cotton, can’t get his breath . . . Wait, wait, white, white, all he can see is
40
PULLING A SHAWL around her shoulders, she pressed her warm forehead against the glass. The sky was just beginning to lighten though there was still a litter of leftover stars, a rag of cloud wiping the grimy moon. And they began, the clocks all out of time, to strike the hour. She closed her eyes.
And so it was eight o’clock, and then eight o’clock had passed.
On the branch outside was the dark shape of a blackbird, absolutely still, then lifting and vanishing into the blue-black. Stepping backwards till the bed caught her behind her knees, she allowed herself to fall flat on her back. Gone. But within her belly, a kick of life.
She had Hale drop her at the top of Harri’s lane and waited for the growl of the engine to fade away, leaving her with the sound of dripping from a privet hedge – and otherwise silence. It was a still day. No sun, the sky was a heavy sodden grey and in the air hung the breath of rotting leaves, a faint sweet tang from the brewery.
Later she’d visit Harri – and no doubt find Gwen ensconced beside the fire. There was Christmas to discuss, but for now she turned away, and threaded down the lanes towards the river. In her arms was a hessian bag, borrowed from the pantry, filled with a light yet bulky load. Through the boatyard she went, passing a man in goggles working with a blowtorch, vivid orange sparks splashing the ground. Other boats, swaddled in tarpaulins, slumbered.
She let herself out of the yard, through a gate and onto the river path alongside the brown sluggish water moving patiently, inexorably seaward. Strands of the weed that clung to landing posts drifted like clotted hair. She stood in the raw, chill river’s breath.
A chap with a whippet passed by, nodded, eyed her curiously. It must look queer for a woman to be lurking there alone on such a disagreeable day.
A heron stood motionless only a yard or so away, shoulders hunched in an attitude of resignation. She stepped closer, and with a reproachful look it hauled itself into the air and lumbered away, across the river towards the far bank with its huddle of Scots pines feathered black against the sky.
No one to see. She crouched and opened the bag, revealing a rustle of folded paper boats, on which glimpses of Powell and of Vincent were visible in different planes: an eye here, a finger, an ear. One by one, she lifted these fragile craft and set them on the brown water, watched them sail off on the rush, sometimes tangling in weed or lodging against a landing post before they were washed free. She waited till each one was out of sight before she launched the next. The last one she raised to her lips before she set it on the water, holding her breath until it vanished on the tide.
And then, a little light-headed from crouching, she straightened up, took Vincent’s notes from her pocket, tore them into tiny shreds and scattered them on the water, smiling at a hapless duck which, supposing the paper to be bread, snapped its beak amongst the scraps.
How the children would have loved to see the boats. Well, she’d make more. She’d teach the twins, help them with the folding, and on a sunny day in spring, they’d come down here to launch them.
She remembered the last time she’d walked along here, with Harri and Gwen and the children. Gwen’s gauche attempts to be jolly
and aunt-like had been‑ quite killingly cringeworthy, and poor Captain had loped along looking most put out. But it was nice that they were happy, Harri and Gwen, though downright peculiar – typical of Harri, as Dennis said – not to simply find herself a solid chap and settle down like any normal woman.
He seemed to have stopped finding the idea of sapphists in the least titillating since Harri had ‘joined the brigade’ and that was a relief. And there had been no further mention of Harri moving to the Beeches. Still, she’d be there for Christmas, and Gwen too, no doubt, and all the children, and Dennis, of course. She didn’t love him the way she’d loved Powell, but in quite another way – a daily way, a calm and grateful way. Yes, she loved him well enough.
And, of course, next Christmas, there would be another to love. As she stood, hand on belly, watching the brown flow of the tide, she felt a surge of movement inside. The boats were gone. Powell was gone. Vincent was gone. But the child was certainly there, growing and kicking. A girl, oh, let it be a girl, please – let it be Aida.
A watery sun penetrated the army-blanket cloud, casting leaden gleams on the tide, and she turned away – it really was a chilly day – and hurried towards the warmth of Harri’s.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to Andrew Greig, Jane Rogers, Tracey Emerson, Bill Hamilton, Moira Forsyth and Alison Rae for their careful reading and invaluable input and advice.
www.sandstonepress.com
facebook.com/SandstonePress/
@SandstonePress
Blasted Things Page 29