Mercy Seat

by Wayne Price

  Kerrigan got up from the floor and staggered out to the hall. In the quiet I heard the bathroom door close and the lock snap to.

  Let’s go now, Christine said. Before he comes back.

  The rain began almost as soon as we left the house – cold, fat, Atlantic drops. I don’t know when Christine arrived at the decision to make for the rocks and the sea instead of Bethesda – maybe there and then as we hunched under the rain, or maybe while she’d sat and watched the night go by in a swirl of strangers and empty talk, or maybe she’d been planning it all along, for days – but at some point I realised she’d quickened her pace and was heading away from the orange lights of the promenade, toward the dark of the headland.

  No – the other way, I called. I was still quite drunk, though the walk had begun to sober me, and when she didn’t turn I jogged after her numbly, splashing through puddles, hardly feeling the ground under my feet. I was desperate, almost to the point of weeping, to get back to warmth, familiarity, and the blankness of sleep.

  She waited until I’d caught up then said simply: Come with me. Will you?

  Where are you going?

  Just come with me. We won’t be long.

  I don’t know if I should have turned away and let her go. Would she have given up and followed me? I doubt it. Would she have ever come back again? How could I tell? And of course I’ll never know, though I’ve asked myself the question a thousand times since, when I’ve woken from dreams in the small hours, almost smelling the rain and sea.

  I followed her down to the shingle where the tide was sweeping black and slow, drowning the patter of the rain with its drag and hiss. She stooped to peel away her canvas shoes and carried them barefoot, one in each hand, picking her way carefully onto the smooth rocks above the swilling water. I was frightened for her now, and staying with her as much from a dull, protective instinct as from fascination.

  Had Jenny shown her the place where we first met? Where she’d climbed up to me and smiled and offered me wine and company? I think so now, though I didn’t know then and will never know for sure. And either way, whether by chance or design, she stopped at the same low, flat rock and lifted her soaked dress over her head, unclipped her bra, rolled down her underwear and lowered herself whitely, waist deep, into the moving water.

  I watched in a kind of trance. The rain had stopped and the lights of the town were hidden by the headland. A strange, enormous stillness seemed to have settled on the world – the quiet, lapping sea, shifting in its sleep, and the great blanket of clouds above it, already beginning to pale with the first faint glimmer of morning. She waved me toward her and I undressed, shivering, and joined her.

  To begin with I swam in her wake, the gripping cold stealing all my thought from me so that I moved in a kind of strenuous dream, mechanical and slow, keeping pace with the sound of her movements breaking the water ahead of me. My eyes burned with the salt and soon I was swimming blind, eyelids tight shut, conscious only of the lift and drop of each lazy swell. When I felt the first deep tug of the current sweeping out from the bay to the open sea I stopped and turned my body in the water, treading on God knows how many fathoms of nothing, facing the shore again. Christine’s head, just visible, bobbed darkly like a seal’s in the distance. She was making her way toward the headland now and I realised I must have lost her when she changed direction.

  When does one life end and another begin? It was then, I think, for me: watching the far away, shadowy cliffs seem to rise and fall with the swell, a deeper black against the dark sky and its pale stars; treading deep water, feeling the dead chill of it in my blood and bones; all that frigid weight of ocean holding me in its grip. I wasn’t afraid, though the last of my drunkenness had soaked away and I understood with complete clarity the danger I was in; instead, what I was most conscious of was the oddly dreamlike impossibility of rest – of my feet stirring listlessly like tiny straws, my arms and hands waving like insect wings in slow motion; I was hovering, and had to keep hovering, dizzyingly high up, pinned above a seabed that stretched like an empty desert all the way to America.

  I found Christine waiting for me, dressed again, on the steps of Bethesda. By then it was almost dawn and the rain had begun again, washing the salt from our faces and hair. I could see the deep chill in the blue-white skin of her arms and legs.

  What kinds of thoughts had passed through my head between losing her in the dark and finding her there, shivering at the door? They’re lost to me now, vanished along with the years; maybe they already were, even as we faced each other. Maybe any attempt at making sense is just a kind of forgetting. Maybe only the story happens, not the meaning. The selkie steps out of the waves, and we think we’re the tellers – we think it or we’d go mad – but we’re the listeners. No, not even that. We’re the thing that’s told, and nobody – nothing – is listening.

  Inside the door we stood near the radiator at the foot of the stairs for a while, letting the water drip from our hair and clothes. It was too early for the Clements to be stirring, but high above us the flush of a lavatory sent the sound of draining water gurgling faintly through the wall. Neither of us spoke and finally she turned her back on me and started climbing the stairs to the flat. And to Jenny, sleeping, or lying wakeful in the dark.

  Ten

  When I woke late the next morning, Christine was already gone. I knew without needing to leave the bedroom. The door was ajar and I could hear Jenny speaking to Michael. Her voice was freer and softer: some kind of tension had relaxed and slackened in it. I hadn’t noticed consciously that it had changed in the first place, but lying there and listening to her talking half to Michael and half to herself, I realised she suddenly sounded familiar again, and I knew what that meant. Eventually she put her head around the door to check on me. You’re awake, she said.

  What’s the time?

  About eleven. What time did you come in?

  I don’t know. Four or five, maybe. You were asleep.

  No. I remember you getting undressed. Your jeans were soaked through and you couldn’t get them off.

  I tried to smile. I don’t remember, I lied.

  I want to cook a meal this evening, she announced suddenly. Just for us. To get back to being just us, and everything normal again. She joined me on the bed and lay flat on her back on top of the sheets, staring at the ceiling. There was a calm finality in the way she spoke.

  Fine, I said, and kept my eyes fixed on the profile of her face. Her jaw was clenching and unclenching, shifting all the time.

  You’re going out in the van again today?

  God. That’s right. I’ll need to shift this headache. I stayed quiet then. I knew better than to mention Christine, though of course she was all I was thinking about. There would be no mention of Christine now, or of her going, at least not this morning, I understood. How far away was she now? Was she already waiting between trains somewhere, staring into a coffee, or watching the land go by through a thick window, angry with me maybe – yes, she’d be angry, it was anger all along – like she’d always been with Jenny. Angry forever. We won’t be long, she’d said. And then she was naked, white and slim and shivering, stepping into the sea.

  I know what happened, Jenny said.

  I felt my heart and breathing stop, as if a hand had covered my face, smothering my nose and mouth. Nothing happened, I managed to say.

  Don’t, she said. I know what happened. You could have died. You could easily have fucking died. You don’t even swim very well. She could have killed you. Her voice was cracking now. I thought she might turn and hit out at me, furious, but she caught her breath and steadied her tone. You didn’t think about me, or Michael. You didn’t think about us. You didn’t think how that would have been.

  I shook my head. I meant nothing happened between us.

  She stared at me then, so long and steadily I had to turn my head at last and look away. That, she said. That never even occurred to me. I don’t even know what to say to that. Christ’s sake, L
uke, she said. She rolled away from me and climbed off the bed.

  I didn’t know what you were thinking, I said. I closed my eyes.

  The phone on the landing started ringing but we both ignored it, waiting for it to be answered or to stop. Nobody went to it, and in the end, mid-trill, it cut off. Through in the living room Michael began to grizzle.

  What goes on in your head? Jenny asked as she went through to him, talking to any one of us, maybe – Michael, me or herself.

  I collected the van in an exhausted daze, hardly responding when Anzani handed over the delivery list and explained the route. I was going further afield that day: out along the Rheidol Valley in fact, near Pugh’s farm, to some of the small tourist shops, pubs and cafes around Devil’s Bridge. The weather had worsened by the time I walked the mile or so around the bay to the shop, as if the equinox had shifted and brought its big, planetary storms ahead of time, and now we stood hunched over a map together, in the narrow shelter of the back porch, the rain jumping up from the concrete. He circled each stop with a biro, the hiss of the rain almost drowning out his words even if I’d been listening to them. The yard stank and in the nearest corner a pile of sodden debris had been raked together and heaped up – last year’s black leaves belched up by the drains, silt, scraps of rotten paper. There were comb marks in the wet filth around the yard where someone had been brushing it all together. Anzani paused and regarded it. A bad stink, eh? It better not go through my shop or we sue the fucking Council, eh? He shook his head and looked up at the sky in disgust. More rain tomorrow too, so that’s great, eh? More shit for my yard. He handed me the clipboard, map and keys and I splashed over to the van.

  Anzani picked his way to the gates and swung them open, looking pained at having to tread his good shoes all over the yard, seeming suddenly much older under the rain. As I edged the van out he kept glancing down at his feet and at the wheels rolling past the toes.

  I don’t know what made me drive to the library first. Some intuition, or morbid fear. And she was there, waiting, hooded in a short dark anorak, not at all surprised to see the slow white van make its way toward her and stop, the damp engine rattling. As I leaned across the cab to open the lock on the door I felt a strong, almost suffocating sense of time suddenly folding, or closing like the lid of a box, over every small action now – my fingers on the plastic latch, my foot on the pedal of the brake – sealing me in to a place with no clear way back to the outside world I was leaving.

  I’m cold, she said. I’ve been waiting. Can you put the heating on?

  I didn’t ask her where she’d left her suitcase, or where she was staying now – it didn’t seem relevant somehow – and she didn’t offer any information.

  I drove for what seemed like a long, unbroken time along winding country roads that seemed to repeat themselves, mile on nearsighted mile, through endless curtains of rain. At a crossroads I saw the black and white sign for Strata Florida, Ystrad Fflur, and remembered the misericords at Clarach, spirited from the abbey there when it was left to wrack and ruin. It seemed like whole seasons and years had passed since that walk along the cliff path in the sun.

  At one point I reached over and rested my hand on her thigh, but Christine didn’t respond except to glance at it briefly as if to see what unexpected weight had settled on her leg. I left it lying there a while, then lifted it back to the wheel.

  The road to the last cafe wasn’t much more than a farm track and Christine tensed each time we thumped in and out of the potholes that littered it. They were filled with brown water and it was impossible to tell the shallow puddles from bone-jarring craters. In the end I slowed the van right down and tried to weave through, though the slow, clumsy swaying of the van kept Christine just as rigid in her seat as when we were crunching into them.

  There were toilets beside the cafe – a couple of weathered Portacabins on stilts, the doors pegged open – and as soon as I’d brought the van to a standstill Christine let herself out and strode through the rain to the wooden steps of the Ladies. I watched her go in through the open doorway and caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror as she rounded a partition to get to the stalls.

  I dealt with the small delivery, signing over a few crates of soft drinks and biscuits, and was surprised to see that Christine still hadn’t returned to the van when I got back. After a minute or so of silence a carload of what looked like students pulled up alongside and one of them, the young guy driving, jumped out to sprint to the Gents. He held his arms over his head and shook it wildly as he ran the few yards to the hut, as if astonished by the rain. While he was gone the others in the car – another lad and two girls – started clowning with the horn and in a moment he came grinning to the door of the hut, holding his cock in one hand, like an angler showing off a limp, pink fish, and giving them the finger with the other. They cheered and he went back in to finish while one of them jabbed even harder on the horn, all three cat-calling out of the opened windows. One of the girls caught my eye as she yelled and I looked away to the ruins of what must have been a barn when the cafe was still a farmhouse – a low grey wall and in the middle of it the remains of its wide entrance, the tall archway intact but all of it roofless now under the rain.

  The car was gone by the time Christine came out and down the steps of her hut. I leaned across to open the door for her.

  What was all that? she asked, her voice taut, as if I were somehow to blame.

  Just kids messing around. Drunk, I think. They’ve gone now. I took a good look at her. She was less pale than when we’d left town but her face still looked drawn and tired.

  It made me afraid to come out, she said. I didn’t know what was happening. She sat back, staring at the dark sacks of cloud heaped above the Portacabins and the tumbledown barn.

  That’s the last delivery, I said. It’s getting late. We’d better head back.

  She lolled her head from side to side against the back of the seat. Not yet, she said. You could take us somewhere.

  Where?

  I don’t know. Only if you want to. She was speaking so low I could hardly hear her over the drumming rain. I leaned closer. You could drive somewhere quiet, she said.

  I nodded, feeling my mouth become dry.

  It was a struggle to restart the engine and for a moment I imagined us stranded there, and all the strangeness of the day – and the days before it – ending in nothing more than a kind of mechanical farce of phone calls, frustrations, and a tow-truck hauling us back to reality. But finally the ignition caught and I rolled the van out of the car park and along the narrow track to the main junction.

  Where now? I said.

  Not back to town. Turn left and see where it goes.

  It goes to the farm, I said, if we turn off again higher up.

  She nodded as if she already knew and soon we were in the midst of familiar forested hills I’d only ever climbed alone before, and on foot.

  It’s along there, I said, slowing the van to a crawl. Away to our left the farm’s dirt track branched off through a clump of spindly firs, its red mud and bare stones unchanged in the two years since I’d last trudged over them. The road itself widened opposite the turning – a muddy, tyre-rutted lay-by where trailers were sometimes unhooked and left between loads. It was empty now. I bumped the van into the space, leaving the road clear. We can turn here, I said. The rain had eased as we wound higher across the face of the hill and just a few heavy drops broke the silence at intervals, blown from the overhanging branches, maybe.

  Let’s go out and get some air, she said, unclipping her seat belt. I saw a path going down into the trees a little way back. I’d like to see where it goes. She opened her door and slipped out.

  I didn’t want to cut the engine again but had no choice now. I turned the key and joined her where she stood peering downhill through the ranks of trees.

  Let’s go back to it, she said, and skirted the muddy clearing to reach the gravelled road.

  We tramped downhill for a h
undred yards or so until the spider’s leg of the trail appeared. I recognised it, and had even wandered along it once not long after I’d arrived to work at the farm, but didn’t say anything to her. It must have been a Forestry Commission access track at some point, maybe when the hill was planted, but now it was just a grassed-over green way amongst the pines. Christine strode on ahead of me, startling a few sheep and lambs grazing in the margin of the trees. They skittered past her, then saw me and turned again, confused, the lambs bleating. In the end they waited watchfully for us to pass. Not one of them pushed through deeper into the branches.

  I can see buildings, Christine said. She’d stopped walking where the path seemed to have ended in a broad clearing. I caught up with her and looked into the trees further down the slope and to the left where she was pointing. Beyond a screen of young pines a low, broken-down wall was visible, and behind it a handful of structures built from the same pale, roughly shaped stone. She started toward them and I followed automatically.

  It must have been a village, she said. So many ruins all around. If I had to live anywhere I’d like to live in a place like this.

  They’re all over the hill, I said, wondering what she meant. Old farms from before the forestry.

  Is that all they are?

  I laughed despite myself. What else could they be? All the way up here?

  She shrugged. Here’s the rain again, she said, and moved close to me under the branches.

  We stood in the gloom of the pines for some time, watching the cloud burst leap up from the stones and batter the dense clumps of nettles in the old doorways. She rested her head against my arm as the minutes dragged on and the rain gradually eased.