I watched as Charlie pulled in, hand-over-hand, and the silver bulge of the catch glimmered just under the surface, like a furious windsock. It was too heavy for him. He engaged the winch clutches and the bobbins reappeared. Claws, tails and tentacles bulged from the net as it swung over the pound at the centre of the deck. I stared at the dilated lip of the net, drizzling pink water across the boards. I thought I could hear screaming, but it was just the gears of the winch grinding under the weight.
Charlie released the slipknot and it all came slithering out. I reflexively stepped back and slipped on the wash of mucus and blood and brine. I went down hard on my backside as the tide of fish charged into me. Within seconds I was coated in a foam of slime. Charlie was laughing, his hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking as if he were trying to shrug something off him. But then I saw the knot of confusion tying itself into his forehead. He was staring into the glut of marine life as it arced and shuddered. I stared too.
Charlie radioed to shore and the harbour master and a police car and a contingent of forensic experts were there to greet us when we arrived back at the landing stage. We were questioned, but it didn't take long. The police seemed bored. It became obvious that this was something that happened from time to time.
One of the forensic officers said that it was clear without the benefit of carbon dating that the bones we'd dredged up had been in the sea for a long time, maybe centuries. They had been preserved just beneath the seabed until we disturbed them.
Charlie had seemed in shock. He wouldn't talk to me on the way back to the harbour, but turned to the task of sorting the fish, kicking the runts and the exotica and the bad-eaters over the edge. He kept away from the little clutch of skulls and femurs, tossing a tarp over them when he'd finished. Then he went belowdecks to put the haul on ice. I'd stayed by the tarp on the two-hour journey back, cold through to my own bones.
We went for a drink after the remains had been taken away and the statements signed off. It was late. We didn't talk. We sank our pints and our whisky chasers and walked out of the pub. Charlie kept going, down the beach, to his fish shed. The catch had to be taken to market. The excitement of a good haul - a few kilos of big cod in the main - had been blunted. I watched him snatched away by darkness and stared at the sea, or the area where the sea was, for ten minutes. The sigh of it as it collapsed against the beach. It sounded like relief.
It was midnight when I turned the key in the lock. I listened for Ruth but could hear nothing. I went for a hot bath and crept into bed. I couldn't get rid of the cold, even though the heating was on. I felt too tired to sleep. But then I woke up and I was sweltering, the sweat dripping off me. I felt my skeleton clenched within its juicy prison. My grinning incumbent. White skull.
You know, cannonball, and the like.
I rolled over and my heart was beating hard and fast and it was as if the skeleton had somehow got its ribcage to shrink in a bid to press down on what was keeping me alive.
I am within you but you are also within me.
I sat up. Wind cast spits of rain against glass. I knew I'd said the words. Spoken them for my thin, white friend. My blood brother. I suddenly felt claustrophobic and nauseous. I tasted whisky. I felt my stomach rising. I made it to the bathroom before I was sick and I kept my eye on what I was bringing up. Madness: I was looking for splinters of bone. Evidence that he, that I, was trying to escape myself.
I got back into bed and lay there shivering for an hour, until I heard the key in the lock. Ruth closed the door gently but there was no sound of her feet on the stairs. I saw a shadow spoil the line of light at the foot of the door and I pretended to be asleep. The door cracked open. I could feel her eyes on me. No doubt she had heard about the skulls. I really didn't want to go over that again just now.
She pushed the smell of the sea in front of her. She was wreathed in a fresh marine tang, as if she had spent all day on the beach, or walking the salt marshes. She smelled cold, but good. She smelled pregnant, I supposed.
She switched off the landing lights and I heard her climb the stairs, the sound of her bed as it took her weight and she diminished into sleep. The house followed suit, creaking and settling around her. I thought, much later, that I heard her cry out, but that could well have been me, or something disturbed in the dunes further down the beach. I listened hard, and she might have been sobbing into her pillow, but the noise might also be the suck of the tide at the shingle, or the fretting of the wind dancing around the village's firebreaks. I might have been dreaming it. I might still be in a coma. This could be death.
9
This could be death, she thinks, her first thought every morning, before her watch beeps and she thinks hard about how many beeps there must have been since The Man brought her down here, so that she will not forget, so that she can cling to some idea of time.
I breathe, I see, but it's so dark in here, even without blindfold. This is death, anyway. How much longer can you take? How long till he gets bored and decides to end it?
As usual, every morning (this is morning, right?), she wakes and it's like not waking, to the extent that she can't quite believe that she has wakened. The dark seems so complete, more so than the shades behind her eyes even, that it's hard to accept. But then her watch beeps, a day has turned, and she can concentrate on getting through this fresh block of time. The next block, with all the things that do and don't happen within it. That can and might happen.
The Man comes every day. Sometimes he does not switch on the light. Despite her fear of the dark, his switching on the light in here - a single bulb covered in ancient fly spots, wreathed in dusty cobwebs - is much, much worse. Like emerging into a nightmare that has been trying to coalesce in a hitherto well-defended mind. The misfire heartbeat. The flutter in the chest.
I read about this in self-help books, talked about it too at classes. Arrhythmia. Can I handle this? Will I give up against my will?
She does not know what the worst thing about the light coming on might be. Perhaps just the sound of his fingers flipping the switch. Perhaps just that. But then she sees - once she's managed the pain of the light's stab at her eyes - The Man, and the curtain in the corner of the room, and both are the worst thing imaginable, in their own way.
The Man brings her hot drinks, or water, or food. He brings good food. Soup and stews and steaming greens. Meat, fish, eggs, cheese. Lots of fruit. He brings her blankets if it is especially cold, and it is always cold. He brings her magazines to read. He allows her one hour every day to read: he unlocks one hand so that she can turn the pages. He switches on a radio that plays calm music - classical or jazz - for one hour before he brushes her teeth, changes her nappy and turns out the light.
I can't look at him. Once was enough. My eyes slid away from him like they could not bear the sight. Like bad dog. One look, maybe a second of him, and it's like he branded me. He is big. Bulky. He reminds me of being kid, a tomboy playing in the street with Yakiv, dressing up in old coat, pillows tied to our waists, pretending to be Mr Shevchuk at the café in Odessa, fat on his galushki and his nalystniki. His face. Face of fish. An orange mask (but sometimes I wonder... sometimes I wonder if this might be his real face). He wears big coat with long hood so I can't see back of head or hair. He's keeping his face secret. That's good. That's a good thing, isn't it? That's tick in box. A happy face. Because why would he hide himself if he wasn't going to let me go?
Identifying marks, then. Suck him in. Detail. Anything you can. Wait for the moment he takes off his gloves. Coughs. Try to smell him. Aftershave? Body odours? Cooking aromas? Like grandmother smelling of fried beef and spices after a morning cooking smazhenyna. Wiping her hands, like old pieces of blond wood, on her pinafore, over and over, as if she wouldn't be satisfied they were dry until her skin came off. Grandmother with her large black plastic spectacles and the lenses that magnified her eyes. It always used to bother her a little, seeing her babushka take those glasses off. Scared her, even, when she was very littl
e. Her eyes would never be as big as she'd expect, and it was like looking at a different person, for a while, until she spoke, until she put her glasses back on.
I can't see his shoes. It's too dark down there, and anyway, he wears long, large jeans and I can't lift my neck up off the bed enough to see. But I can hear him. Hear his shoes catching on the dirt of that floor. He shuffles little bit. Maybe his shoes too big. Maybe he has them by side of door, puts them on, like pair of old gardening boots you never bother to tie up. Something to slip on while you empty bins, or throw ball back over wall to next door kids. A glass of wine in garden with Paul would be nice now. Him with his Cabso, as he calls it. Me with some cold Chardonnay, or cava. The bubbles up the nose make me laugh. Paul stares at me, at my mouth, when I laugh. Like little boy watching magic trick. He likes my laugh. He says it just like bubbles.
Beat the panic. Think of something. Think of anything. Your yoga classes with Miss Regan. It's all so formal and British. Nobody calls each other by their first names. She has no clue what her name is. What could it be? What does she look like? Miss Regan reminds her of a Larysa, but of course, she wouldn't be that. Not here in England. A Penelope, then? A Martha? Mary? Elizabeth? The stretching, the reaching. Sometimes she was so relaxed, so utterly comfortable in her surroundings, in her own skin, that she thought she could stretch beyond what was normal and perhaps open her eyes to find herself in an impossible place, the others staring at her, not knowing whether to try to unknot her or call an ambulance.
The smell of peppermint tea and freshly laundered clothes drying on radiator. Drops of tea tree oil in bowls of hot water. Nicer smells than here. I can't think what it is making them. Rotting fish? Stale earth? Raw sewage? After while, it's like my nose has gone numb. I can't smell anything but stink of whatever it is, and soon, even that is in background. It's not important. What is important is keeping hold of who I am. Track the days. Time is my friend now.
She has been here long enough to not even register the pungent smells that assaulted her so violently on that first day, when she thought she must be sick. The Man had left her immediately, having fastened her hands with a chain to a bolt buried deep into the wall. The bindings around her wrists were padded to prevent chafing. Before closing the door on her, he had adjusted an electric fire so as to keep her warm, and switched on a radio. She had tensed herself to every sound over the following hours, convinced he would return to rape her or shoot her or torture her.
Slow down. Breathe. Try to calm your heart. It is not good for you. You want to end up like your mother? A heart attack at 45? Then relax. Always worrying, she was. Always wringing her hands over some imagined problem or another. Heavy smoker. Drank too much. It's only wine. Wine is good for you. A glass to toast a sunny day. A glass to compensate for a cloudy one. Half a bottle with dinner. Half a bottle without. She slept badly, if at all. Do you want to be like her? Focus. Concentrate. Shift your mind.
Miss Regan, then, with her long legs and her deep frown. She seemed so confident, yet she could never look a person in the face. Always at a point just above, the forehead, as if she were conversing with the third eye, the ajna... and being a yoga teacher, perhaps she was. In her bedroom in the pub, with the other women. Not much room. A select bunch were we.
Are they missing me? She wasn't meant for us. Too aloof. Too... foreign. There was a waiting list for that class. Someone would have sharked in, as Paul used to say. One out, one in. Where did she go? She wasn't around for long. That might have been the extent of it.
Her mind turned to Paul, trying not to imagine him as she had last seen him, scabbed over and spent in his bed, but dynamic, as he had always seemed to her. He was the kind of person who constantly looked as though they were being propelled, that movement was a prerequisite of life, like that of a shark. But it wasn't the kind of energy that made you feel nervous, or exhausted. It inspired you. Even when he was relaxing, there was power in him, and purpose. When he slept, she imagined lifting his eyelids to see a 'standby' icon glimmering soft red where his pupils ought to be.
There was a fraction of her, the most infinitesimal part (awful, unforgivable, disgusting), that found a shred of relief in what had happened to her. It meant she was spared having to watch her boyfriend (and God, wasn't that the weakest way to describe him... no, he was her man, her love, the love) curl up like a piece of paper introduced to flame. And if he was in hell, then she was with him now.
She'd read somewhere once, about a mathematician, about how he would find himself some space and time to think, a window of fifteen minutes. The most he could devote to a problem was two or three minutes before his mind wandered. But this was exceptional, apparently. Most people spent less than that. Maybe only a minute or so, before something else impinged. It might feel as though you were dedicated to a task, but only generally. The ordinary mind couldn't cope with that kind of focus.
She tried staying with Paul, but other things snapped their fingers, waved their hands in her face.
That curtain, for example.
It was a shower curtain. Like a shower curtain. White. Or it had been, once. Now it was grey, stained, mottled at its lower edges with mould. It was opaque, but not to the extent that you could not discern that something lay behind it. It was suspended by rusting rings from a rail attached to this low ceiling. So low that the bottom of the curtain was pleated up against the floor. It's bottom hem was filthy, dark with water sucked up by capillary action. It was the only other thing in the room, beyond that pitted lightbulb, to look at. It was so still that she sometimes formed the illusion that it was shivering, pulsing infinitesimally, as if it were touching something that bore a heartbeat and was waiting for her to sleep, or die, so that it could have its way with her.
Not once, in all the days I've been here, has The Man pulled that curtain back. I don't know what's behind it. A bath? But he's only ever washed me with a cloth and a bucket of warm water. If it's a toilet, then why won't he let me sit on it, instead of putting me in those nasty incontinence pants morning and night? What would you need to conceal in a shitty little room like this? It makes me want to scream. I feel this panic build up behind my lips and sometimes its too great for whatever it is to escape. I cry or make this weird sort of sobbing, strangled voice in my throat. What is that? Frustration? Fear? Panic? All of it, and more, probably. I've never made a noise like it before in my life. I'm finding out about myself in here. I'm coming to know me a little better. And I'm not sure I like who I am.
She tried screaming, once. Early. Maybe as early as the first day, although her head was pounding with the dregs of whatever it was he'd bested her with. Chloroform? She remembered the hand and the handkerchief whipping around her face, and then a dream of monkeys linking arms, dancing around a campfire, and she was dancing too. And then waking up with her hands tenderly manacled, and the great, punishing dark, so black she was sure for a while that she was dead. She called out but nobody answered, nobody came. She screamed for help and her voice fell against the walls as if it were constructed from cotton wool.
He came to her later, The Man, and switched on the light and she averted her gaze from the cold, orange plastic of his face, and read the note he pushed in front of her eyes.
Scream all you want. Soundproof. Nobody will hear you.
Why doesn't he speak to me?
Chapter Five
CVR
On the beach. Nacre sky. Endless stones damp and bright from the retreating surf. I empty the plain polythene bag of its contents and start building the pyre. Milk teeth in an envelope. A mass of clipped hair tied together with rubber bands. A photograph of a man sitting in front of a Mediterranean meal, his eyes scorched out of the paper. I finish him off. First match. The teeth don't burn. I toe them into the stones, hoping that the child that gave them up made a few quid from the tooth fairy. Hoping they fell out naturally. A sweetish smell rises from the burning hair, and it goes with a lilac flame. I see faces in the smoke. Half-recognised. Strangers.
I never discussed children with Tamara. She never brought it up so I didn't feel the need. We used contraception when we first started seeing each other and this carried on out of habit. Tamara was very easy around children, and I could see her mothering instinct was coming to the fore. When I left my profession I thought it might be time to discuss family. But then the accident happened. Maybe she left me because she wanted to be a mother and believed that I wasn't interested. Maybe she thought I would be no use now as a father. What good is a dad who can't play football with his son, or swing his daughter around in the park?
Loss of Separation Page 6