by Cole Moreton
‘Please don’t let them take me away from here tonight.’ Sarah’s in the stairwell, looking up into the room.
‘Hey. Come up. Hang on a second. Look at this.’ He lights a church candle in a tall metal lantern, then reaches across to switch off the main lamp. Now the infinite darkness outside is revealed and the room appears to be suspended in the black of space. She rises from the stairs as if entering a space station, woozy and weightless. They could be in orbit above a mystery planet, astro-nauts in some kind of steampunk Victorian command module with metal window frames, and glass that reflects the million stars. There is also the moon, a pale orange disc caught in the glass beside, behind and beyond her. Three moons – it is impossible to say which is real.
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‘Wow.’
‘I know. How are you feeling?’
‘I have an elephant on my head. Wow though. Really.’
Sarah slides into the room and he can’t help himself: he’s wowed himself by the way she moves. Wrapped in a bottle green blanket, hair wild, eyes bloodshot, chalk on her rusty jeans, it doesn’t mat-ter, she’s . . . stop this.
‘What happened—’
They say it together.
‘I thought you’d tell me,’ he says.
‘I don’t remember. Magda, is it? She was being nice, trying to help.’
Gabe sits down beside her on the bench that runs along the curve of half the room, a semi-circular wooden frame of the kind you might find on a ship. He’s going to build hot-air heaters underneath it and hide them with the slats that are piled by the top of the stairs, as yet untreated. For now, there is warmth and an orange glow from a stinky old paraffin heater.
‘The police will want to know what you took.’ ‘What do you mean? Nothing.’
‘Look at you.’ He nods at the black mirror of the window. She looks, and winces. ‘Not good.’
‘Oh, I don’t know . . . Listen, Sarah, you’ve got to tell me what this is.’
‘There is no time. Unless you promise I can stay here. Until the morning, first thing. When they come, let me hide. Tell them I’m okay.’
‘They won’t listen. Jack was here. Yesterday. Before I knew you were . . . hiding. I sent him away. We had a bit of a row. A fight.’
‘Oh. Gabe.’
She has not said his name before. It snags his breath. Panic ris-ing, he moves away quickly. Rí? Where has she gone?
‘I was exhausted, that’s all. I think. You don’t think . . .’
He’s not listening, he’s trying to get a grip, focus on what’s hap-pening here, what it means. ‘Talk to me, Sarah. Tell me. I need to know.’
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She will talk. Make a start at least, before they come. She owes him that. Maybe she can still persuade him to give her the time she needs. Just until morning, that is all. Then she will be gone, out of here, either way. But where to start? Four days ago, when she knew she had to get away? When she clicked on the photograph and suddenly knew what to do? Or before that, way back, on the day she became a childless woman? The day the doctor told her it would be impossible to have a baby without spending money, more money than she had or would ever have. Her mind races through the memory, coming out in a daze to a crowded hospital corridor, a waiting room with toys and games and cartoons on the wall and Jack angry. No, not there. In the bedroom? Should she start that way? Lying on the bed in the early morning with her trousers half down, waiting for Jack to crack the ampoules, fill the syringe, make the injection. Bruising her, every time. He cut his thumb and cursed, every time. Not there either. Where?
‘Ask me questions,’ she says.
Gabe tries to put on a friendly face. ‘Okay. So.’ He can’t be direct. He must take it easy. Let her talk. ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’
A flick of the head says no.
‘How about your mum and dad, are they around?’
The silence that follows makes him think he has said completely the wrong thing, again. But then she says, ‘My father is alone. He has friends, of course. He is in the south of France this week, stay-ing with someone from church. I envy him the sunshine. I should have gone with him.’
‘Why did you come here?’
Too soon. She pulls the blanket tighter. ‘Okay. Tell me about Jack . . .’ ‘Really? You want to do this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Gabe. ‘You don’t have to.’ ‘I thought—’
‘You asked about Rí. I told you.’
‘Yes.’
‘So tell me.’
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She will not sit still, but wriggles and shifts and tucks her legs up, puts them down again. All the time looking out of the windows, eyes searching west, north and east for the blue lights. She judges the directions from a stained-glass compass point in the centre circle of the roof. How much longer has she got?
‘You have to let me stay here,’ she says. ‘Please. I need this time. I will know what to do in the morning.’ Her hands move as if she needs a cigarette. He wishes he smoked. She’s chewing her nails now, but tuts and tucks her hand back under the blanket. ‘I love my husband. I should say that. He makes me laugh. He is a kind person, who cares about the world. He is a good man. It is not his fault. I am tired. It all hurts too much. I wish I had the energy to love him in the way that he needs, but I do not. It is my fault.’
‘Not sure I believe that,’ says Gabe too quickly. ‘You cannot know. You know nothing about it.’ ‘No. Okay. Fair enough.’
‘Jack has dreams to chase. Demons chase him.’ That he can believe.
‘He was a mess when I met him, a bundle of nerves.’ Not much has changed then.
‘When I first met Jack, he was always quoting his father. He was so idealistic, there were all these words about changing the world. It was inspiring, to be with someone who cared so much. I would ask when we could meet and Jack was keen for that to happen, but it was never the right time. I should have realized, I suppose, but then one time I was watching the guy on YouTube, to see what he was like—’
‘What is he, a preacher?’
‘Not quite.’ She says his name and Gabe is surprised. He knows the music and used to like some of it, on the right night. Epic, overblown gothic love songs.
‘I asked Jack about it when he came home, and he went really quiet on me. I remember that so well, he had never been like it. He was always on the move, fidgeting, drumming, but then he was absolutely still, on the sofa. There was a CD on the coffee table. He picked it up, slipped out the paper inlay and kissed it, like he
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was kissing his dad on the forehead. Then he ripped the picture up, slowly, into little pieces. All over the floor. Do you know why?’
‘It wasn’t really his dad?’
‘No, he is his father. That’s for sure. His mother loved that man, I think, truly. She was young. Very young. Still at school. She went to see him at a gig and he picked her out of the crowd. Kidnapped her, effectively. She wanted to go with him, though, that is true. Nobody noticed, because she was in care; they thought she’d absconded and gave her up as a runaway, which I suppose she was, in a way. Then he left her at a hotel in Vegas, a fortnight later. They all left while she was sleeping. There was no note, or any-thing. She was pregnant.’
‘Bastard,’ says Gabe, wondering if it is true.
‘You look as if you don’t believe me.’
‘I believe you. That’s not the issue.’
‘Well, I know Chana. That’s her name now. I admire her. She brought her son up alone, in terrible places. She was a virgin when she met that man, and two weeks later she was a coke user with a baby inside her. In Vegas. With nothing. Can you imagine? Jack was a handful too. As a child he wouldn’t speak for hours at a time, but would sit there drumming out rhythms on his own head, or lash out at anyone who came close. Even his mum. They were always fighting but she was in control. She is a survivor. Sometimes she even laughs about him. She told me that he called her Layla.’
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‘After the Eric Clapton song? God, that’s cheesy.’
‘Yes, probably, but it is also some kind of woman of the night in Hebrew, Chana told me. Spelt differently, but still. Nice nickname for a little girl. I looked it up and this Leila has to do with concep-tion. How ironic is that? When Jack was old enough to ask ques-tions, she had no answers. So she went to a lawyer, had a DNA test and they sued.’
‘Did she win?’
‘He paid her off, to keep it out of the papers.’ ‘That’s something.’
‘Money always runs out. She paid the lawyer and bought Jack an education, which was a good one, but that was more or less it.
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Everything else that she has she built up by herself. There was just one other thing that she paid for, with the last of his money . . .’ Sarah pats her knees in a little rhythm, like Jack, underneath the blanket. She inhales and exhales, as if with an invisible cigarette, and it seems to calm her.
‘Go on . . .’
‘Well. Look. We got this present, just before our wedding. From him. There was a note. Rings, incredibly expensive, Cartier. “Sorry I can’t be there. To my son and his bride, love Dad.” Love? That was the giveaway.’
‘Chana?’
‘She sent the rings herself. Jack’s father never knew a thing about it.’
‘You don’t wear a ring.’
‘Not now. It is in the drawer at home. But that’s a cheaper ring, a more comfortable one to wear in the classroom, you know? The Cartier was in the bank, in the safe. I sold it, to pay for . . . treatment.’
‘And Jack?’
‘He kept his. Refused to sell. Said it was his only link to his father.’
‘But it wasn’t from him—’
‘Try telling him that. Good luck. He says all these things from his father as if he was told them when they were going fishing or watching a game or something, but you know what? They are all taken from songs and interviews. “Music can change the world, because music can change people,” or something like that. Lifted. He learned them off by heart. They’ve never met. Jack tried once, at the apartment in New York. It was like something from The Great Gatsby. He was turned away.’
She feels sorry for him, thinks Gabe. That’s how this works. ‘Jack came here because he wanted to be someone else, you
see? He leant on me and I let him, I liked it. I wanted someone to love. That was okay, then. Now, it’s different. I can’t help him in the same way, because I need some of that kind of love myself and he doesn’t know what to do about that,’ she says, shifting again
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in the chair, stretching out her legs and looking at her boots. ‘I think that’s a fair, accurate summary. He would shout me down though. Jack is a hothead, always moving, drumming. Passionate. He always wanted me to tell him that everything would be all right. He still does.’ Sarah pats the wood at the back of the sofa bench, then spreads out her palms as if arranging an imaginary table. She has unwound in the telling of the story, her voice is less dislocated now, less abstract.
You’re in the room, thinks Gabe. Good.
Suddenly, she turns to look him in the eyes. ‘I don’t think every-thing will be all right. Not at all.’
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Forty
The stories we tell define us. So do the stories we don’t tell and the ones we never finish. When she was a young girl, five or six, Sarah loved to sit on her granny’s lap and nuzzle up, and Granny would tell Bible tales in that soft, precise voice of hers from the lowlands around Dumfries. The Good Samaritan, of course. The Pearl of Great Price. Noah and the Ark, Sarah liked that one: there was a song about the animals and they’d be cats and meow or wave their arms like elephants’ trunks or Sarah would jump down and hop like a kangaroo. Two by two. ‘We two,’ said Granny, but wee sometimes meant little and wee sometimes meant wee, like you did sitting down; it could all get a bit confusing. Granny would laugh. ‘Shall we two kangaroos have a wee wee-wee?’
She laughed a lot and so did Sarah, even though it sometimes felt as if she was being naughty for being happy. She didn’t tell anyone that, though. Then one day Granny got out her little white leather Bible with the silver-edged pages that were as thin as tis-sue, and she wet her finger and looked through, humming to her-self as Sarah lay on the floor playing with an old wooden set of the ark and all the animals and Mr and Mrs Noah and the little white dove that was her favourite. Apart from the tigers.
‘Come here, lovely; listen to this one,’ said Granny, and Sarah shuffled on her bottom across the floor and leaned against Granny’s legs, one arm wrapped around a knee, sucking her thumb. Her daddy would say that she might be getting a bit old for that, but Granny let her do it while she told the story.
‘There was a man and a woman and they lived in the desert and they were terribly old, like me . . .’ Granny’s laugh was like a happy little hiss. ‘The man was called Abraham and his wife was called Sarah.’
That caught her attention.
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‘Yes, like you, my love. She was a special lady.’ And Granny told how Sarah and her husband Abraham were both very old, they lived in a caravan – which was not a caravan like the one they stayed in on holiday at Camber Sands, but another name for a lot of tents and camels and a camp fire and servants (they had servants but they must have been very nice to them because they were nice people, because they were the good people in a story), the caravan was what you called all these people and things and animals as they moved through the desert together – and at night the men would sit around the fire and talk while the women stayed in the tent and cooked.
‘That’s not fair,’ said little Sarah, who was used to having her tea cooked by Daddy, and Granny laughed. ‘No, it’s not. I wish you’d been able to tell your grandad, bless his soul. But anyway . . . these two were old and they had not been able to have any children, which made them very sad. They would have been so jealous of me, sitting here with you like this, it’s such a blessing. They prayed about it and God told Abraham they would have children – as many as the stars, would you believe? That’s a lot, isn’t it? But nothing happened, the stork didn’t come and bring them a baby. Have I told you about the stork? Oh, that’s for another day then!’
She ruffled Sarah’s hair with her free hand, the Bible bal-anced on a knee but disregarded now that her memory had been refreshed. ‘So, one day Abraham was sitting under the shade of a tree they had found, when three men turned up. Mysterious men. Tall, dark and handsome, I like to think. Like your father. Do you know who they were?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘No, nor did Abraham. He had never seen them before, but they looked fine. They had nice robes and healthy, fat camels and there was a custom they had in those days – my own granny had it too on the farm: if a stranger came, you had to be nice to them and give them food, maybe even a place to sleep.’
‘Even if you didn’t know them? Strangers?’
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‘Aye, pet. The world was different then. You’re quite right, you should never take sweets or go with a stranger, that’s true, but Abraham was a grown-up and he was just being nice to these men who were on a journey somewhere, so he offered them a cold drink and a bit of lunch, with a scone maybe.’
That made it all right as far as Sarah was concerned, because she had been a bit worried about the strangers, but there could be no harm in a scone.
‘Then one of the men asked where Sarah was and Abraham was really surprised, because he didn’t know how the man knew Sarah’s name. So he looked again and he saw this wasn’t any ordin ary man, it was God Himself.’
‘Wow!’
‘Ha! Yes, wow indeed.’
‘What did He look like?’
‘I don’t know, pet, the Bible doesn’t say. But it was God any-way, and Sarah could hear Him talking from where she was in the shade in the tent and she heard Him say, “We will come back in a year’s time and you will have a child!”
And do you know what Sarah did?’