The Gap of Time

by Jeanette Winterson

  The rubber tube on his finger attaches to the heart monitor. The mask over his face gives him oxygen from a bottle. His eyes are closed. He still looks like himself but his eyes are closed. Then they came to wheel the bed along the Lino corridor and down to the basement for an MRI scan and it was all in a night’s work to them and they would go home and sleep, but not you.

  What did they write over the bed in wipe-away marker pen? The name of the doctor in charge and the time of admission and Nil by Mouth. It sounded like an island far away.

  Where have you gone?

  She bent over him and kissed him. Mouth to mouth. His lips were dry and salty and unresponsive. This wasn’t a fairy tale. Love couldn’t rouse him.

  Two hard vinyl-covered chairs shoved together seat to seat. A thin blue blanket that smelt of Dettol. Sleep beside the high white bed and its metal safety rails. Sleep under the flickering monitor of his life. Beyond the capsule of the room are the bright lights of the nurses’ station and the neon busyness of hospital nights. But in here there’s the low lamp that lights his face and the green, red and blue of the monitor and outside through the window the heads and tails of hundreds of cars, all going home, not like you. Still part of time. Not like you.

  The long watches of the night.

  —

  I love you and there is nothing I can do.

  —

  Clo was sitting blankly in front of the blank TV screen when Perdita came home from the hospital. They were doing more tests. They had told her to go home and get some rest.

  She went to her little room where the sun made diamonds on the clean, bare floor. Everything seemed the same and nothing was the same. The illusion of objects.

  She slept fitfully at first and then deeply. It was already evening when she woke. She showered and changed, jeans and a sweatshirt, and went downstairs.

  Clo was clearing up from the night before. He saw her and smiled. “You want food? We got a heap of shrimp left over so I made chowder.”

  They sat together in silence at the table. Clo kept glancing at her as he ate. She hadn’t eaten all day and she was hungry. When she had finished she looked straight at him. He looked away.

  “Clo? There’s things I don’t know, aren’t there?”

  “Ask Dad.”

  “I can’t ask Dad. Whatever happened last night—Dad had a stroke and now he’s in hospital. What did happen?”

  “I’m not up to this.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Dad was gonna tell you when you turned eighteen.”

  “I need to know!”

  Clo stood up slowly, pushing from his thighs like a man lifting a weight. “Give me a minute, OK?”

  He left the room while Perdita cleared the dishes. She dropped a bowl and broke it. She bent to pick up the pieces and knocked a glass off the table.

  Clo came back in with a big square attaché case and a cardboard box file.

  “Let me do the dishes. It’ll be cheaper.”

  He grinned at her, trying to help her, but she was staring at the case, not at him. He let out a big all-of-his-mouth blown-out-cheeks sigh and put the case on the table.

  Perdita felt fear. Fear of the tarnished snaplocks. Fear of the dull, unused leather.

  Clo started with the box file. Inside were newspaper clippings, internet downloads, grainy pictures of darkness and flood.

  “I put these together at the time and for a few months afterwards. I was waiting to get arrested.”

  Perdita turned over the clippings. Bridges, police cars, weather reports, breaking news, broken lives.

  “Did you—did Dad—kill…?”

  “NO! Do I look like a murderer? No. We tried to help that Gonzales guy. We were driving. Trying to get home. We saw the car-jack. We went to help him. But it was too late. He hit his head when he fell. I have to say we didn’t know he had been shot. In fact, I don’t know that he had been shot. But he was dead.

  “Dad wouldn’t wait for the cops. You know he doesn’t trust the cops. He thought they’d frame us. We’re black, for Christ’s sake.”

  Perdita was turning over the clippings.

  “You were the men the cops were looking for?”

  Clo nodded; his hand was gripping the table. “Holy of holies, was I scared. We were the unidentified guys in the unidentified car.”

  —

  It was a week or so after the homicide that the TV news started the hunt for a baby that had travelled with Tony Gonzales from London. Gone missing were half a million dollars and a baby girl known only as Baby M.

  Police understand from the parents of the child that Baby M was to be delivered to a close friend of the family who has not yet been traced.

  A hospital nurse, Anna Conchitas, confirmed that Mr. Gonzales had brought the baby into Sainta Maria Hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning and that the baby was in good health and there was nothing irregular. Mrs. Conchitas was the last person to see either Mr. Gonzales or Baby M. Police confirmed that formula milk and diapers were in the backseat of the car. Mr. Gonzales had left his luggage at the hotel, an indication that he had intended to return there.

  —

  “Yeah, that was the report. I never showed it to Dad. I don’t know how much he really knew. He wouldn’t watch the news. He wouldn’t talk about anything. Once he had made up his mind to hold on to you he didn’t want to know anything else. He kept you hidden away in the apartment for a couple of months. Then we moved out to a rental in the suburbs. Folks assumed the kid was mine—another black guy without a job and with a kid—and that Shep was the church-going grandfather trying to do the right thing. Pious white folks beating the shit out of each other with the curtains closed and looking down on black families—all that stuff.

  “Then he bought this place.”

  “With the money?”

  “Yeah, with the money in the case and with the sale of his apartment. We had a good apartment. My mom had an insurance policy—paid out when she died and cleared the loans.”

  “What did Xeno mean about the Mafia?”

  “He was full of drink and shit. We aren’t Mafia! You ever seen any Mafia types round here? No!”

  “Was I in the car?”

  “No, you wasn’t in the car. The guy Gonzales must’a known there was trouble. He stowed you away—we reckon he was coming back for you.”

  “Where was I?”

  Clo looked uncomfortable. “We pulled round to the hospital to fix the tyre and get out of the way, and while I was doing it—couldn’t see my own fingers through the rain—Dad saw you.”

  “WHERE?”

  “The hospital used to have a BabyHatch—for babies…”

  “Like HollyPollyMolly in Guangzhou?”

  “Just the same. Are you OK?”

  Perdita had sat down. “Just keep talking,” she said, because she feared that if he stopped he wouldn’t have the courage to start again and she wouldn’t have the courage to hear him.

  “The BabyHatch was there a few years. Then the moral majority, whoever they are, got it taken away. Never mind that. Dad knew from the start the crazy mess was connected—the baby—that was you—the businessman, the car-jack—but he didn’t know how.

  “He had a hunch. I thought he was crazy. Turned out he wasn’t crazy. But it was maybe two weeks later that more of the story started coming out.

  “That Xeno guy—they found him—he was in Paris. I didn’t recognise him last night—it was only a photo I saw, and it was a long time ago. It’s in here somewhere. He had some kind of long foreign name—Polixenes, or Polixeno—Greek or Brazilian or Argentinian maybe, and dark hair and a beard…you want to find the photo?”

  Perdita shook her head. “Not now.”

  “That’s when we shudda marched down to the NBPD and handed you back, and the money too. The money was in there with you—in this briefcase right here.”

  Clo’s big thumbs clicked the snaplocks. The case lid opened at the hinges.

  “Go ahead—look
inside.”

  Inside were ten hundred-dollar bills.

  “Look at that! I guess Dad must have left them for you to see. It was all bills like that. Yeah. Stacked up like in a movie. And the jewels. Like a fairy tale.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the cops—was it for the cash?”

  “No! It was for you! I never seen a man so fallen in love as Dad was with you. Dad said—his reasoning was—if they had given you away, why were we giving you back? He thought you might get sent to an orphanage. He believed that God had given you to him. And who is to say that ain’t so?”

  Perdita picked up the bills like they were letters to her.

  “And I was scared that we were in trouble by then. So we legally registered you—we found a woman who wanted money and she agreed to name herself as your mother and Shep as your father. She didn’t know nothing. She didn’t care. It was about money to her. We changed your birth date. That’s how you got a passport, birth certificate, social security, all the shit.”

  “How old am I?”

  “Around three months older than you are.”

  —

  Perdita sat down on the couch. Clo came and sat with her and put his arm around her. “You’re still my little sister.”

  “Am I?”

  “Too bad, yeah—you’ll always be my sister. Listen to me. I’m not smart, you know that.” He nudged her. “Go on, you can be honest—this is a day for honesty. OK, I’m a few neons short of a light show.”

  Perdita was laughing as well as crying. Clo held her tight against his big shoulder and chest. He smelled of soap and cologne.

  “But I see what’s plain to see. Unhappy families every place. The dad walks out or the mom’s on pills or cheating. The kids hate everybody and leave home as soon as they can feed themselves. We’re your family because we want to be. If they had’a found Dad they would’a arrested him. That’s how much he wanted you.”

  Perdita wiped her face on Clo’s T-shirt.

  “Will you drive me down to the garage?”

  “Autolycus’s place? What for?”

  “I want to see Zel.”

  Clo looked uneasy but he went for his jacket and keys. In the car, with the radio on, and them both looking straight ahead, because it is easier sometimes to say things when you are both looking straight ahead, Clo said, “You and Dad…I meant what I said. It was love at first sight, him and you. You know, you mended him.”

  “Mended him?”

  “After Mom died he had a broken heart. You mended his heart.”

  Clo reached across and took her hand. They drove like that without speaking, each travelling through parts of their past, until the lights of the town slowed them down into the evening that was now.

  —

  Autolycus was polishing a car. He came straight up to Clo and shook his hand, putting his other hand on Perdita’s shoulder. He didn’t say anything. There was no need.

  Zel slid out on a skateboard from the undercarriage of a black upright Model T Ford.

  He spread out his hands, looking down as he spoke.

  “I am sorry.”

  Perdita said, “I need to see Xeno.”

  The house was dark and set back from the road.

  Under the moonlight, visible, a wisteria that had once been trained up the brickwork had long since grown across the iron balconies. Some of the windows were obscured. The paint on the front door had been softened and defeated by the hot, moist air. The wide, deep steps up to the door hadn’t been swept in a long time.

  It looked like a house in a story.

  Zel unlocked the heavy gates that secured the entrance. They drove in across the gravel.

  Does anyone live here?

  He lives here.

  —

  Zel led Perdita round the side of the building. The brickwork was damp. The garden was overgrown. Nature versus Us. The constant effort of being human. The constant anxiety of being human.

  Holding her hand, Zel took Perdita down some slippy shallow steps, cracked with ferns, descending into what was once the old kitchen. Now it was a lumber-room. He put his hand up inside a grating and drew out a big key like at the beginning of Bluebeard.

  Zel pushed open the door. They heard scuttering.

  “You scared of mice?” She isn’t.

  “Light’s just here.” Click-click of a switch. Nothing.

  Zel held Perdita’s hand and took her haltingly, slowly, up a flight of narrow servants’ stairs that led into a wide hall. He lifted his phone over his head, giving a thin, diffuse light. Perdita saw shadows and deep-recessed doors. A broad, imposing staircase. This house had been a grand house.

  “Let’s try the library,” said Zel, opening a pair of inlaid rosewood doors.

  The air was stale and dusty. The shutters were closed. There were two big church candles on the stone mantelpiece. Zel lit them. That was better. At least they could see.

  Perdita was shivering. The house was cold with the cold that comes when humans go away.

  “I’ll light a fire.”

  Zel knelt down—everything was there that he needed, as though once, some time, someone had wanted to light a fire. Taken pleasure in split kindling and dry logs.

  The big room had two walls lined floor-to-ceiling with books. Old books, expensive books—natural history, science, architecture, biography. In front of the dusty fireplace were two deep leather armchairs scuffed by time. “He loves books,” said Perdita.

  “Yeah. He does. When you’ve finished a book you can put it away and it doesn’t ask to see you again.”

  Perdita went over to the full-length window that was shuttered and barred. She swung the metal stay from its keep and let it drop half a circle so that she could open the shutter and bring in some light from the undarkened sky. At this time of the year the sky had light all night.

  The shutters were well-oiled at the hinges and folded back into their boxes, original, in rosewood, from the colonial days of the house. Perdita ran her hand down the smooth wood, wondering how many hands had opened and closed these shutters; had felt indifference or despair at another night, or happiness, because the day had come.

  She liked old houses. Not having a history of her own, she was drawn towards the history of others.

  “How old is this house?”

  “It’s French. So it’s old.”

  The fire had caught and the young flames filled the room with sudden light and the beginnings of warmth.

  Perdita went and crouched down next to it.

  “Why do you think he’s here?”

  “He’s here.”

  Zel came and knelt beside her. “If I hadn’t come to the bar none of this would have happened.”

  “Something would have happened.”

  “Now you sound like him.”

  “Zel, think back—what did happen?”

  Zel shook his head. “I don’t really recall. He was around, coming and going, but around, until I was about eight, I guess. Then we hardly saw him. He paid all the bills but he just wasn’t there. Like he was dead. I had a dad and then I didn’t have a dad.”

  “Does that mean he ran out on you around the time of the murder and the money and the baby?”

  Zel nodded. “I suppose that’s right. Mom never said anything—nothing at all. Then Mom and I moved to New York City.”

  “Do you remember the murder? Last night, what they were saying? Tony Gonzales?”

  “No. I was a kid. All I remember is that we were moving. I came back here in the holidays at first, for a couple of years, I think, and then the place started getting more and more run-down—no housekeeper, no maintenance. Then one day I arrived at the airport—I was about eleven—and he wasn’t there to meet me. I waited at the airport all day—he didn’t come. Finally I called Mom and she had them put me back on the last flight to New York.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t see him again till I started college in St. Louis. He bought me a motorcycle and taped a not
e to the seat that said ‘DON’T KILL YOURSELF. DAD.’ ”

  “Did he ever take you to England with him?”

  “Yes. When I was a kid—before it went wrong. And they came to see us.”

  “Who did?”

  “His best friend—Uncle Lion. MiMi, that was his wife, and Milo—Milo was their son, same age as me. They all came here, to this house, and Mom and me came here, and twice I went to London, but I don’t remember all that much about it. Why are you asking?”

  Perdita said, “I think you might be my brother.”

  —

  Zel was on his feet. He was running. He wasn’t breathing. He was sweating. His chest hurt as if someone had thrown a brick at him. She was his new world not his old world. She was sight of land. She was the stretch and chance of time. And he had kissed her. And he wanted to go on kissing her. He hated his father.

  —

  Perdita came after him into the big, shadowy hall backlit from the fire and candles in the library. She heard his boots beyond the house running across the gravel. She didn’t feel anything, in that moment, not fear, not sadness, not surprise, not the need to act. What she felt, or rather what she observed—because she had the curious sense that she was an avatar and that this was not her body—was a feeling of inevitability. It had come to this. It was coming to this. This was her coordinate in time.

  —

  And then the lights came on in the hall. The big, ten-bannered drop-down chandelier lit up like the start of a ball. Music. Upstairs.

  “Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose. Every way you look at this you lose…”

  Perdita stood at the foot of the staircase with its wide mahogany treads, wide enough for three people to ascend together. The staircase divided right and left at the first landing, leading to wide passages on either side.

  She went up to the first landing.