She couldn’t quite be clear in presenting her hopes for the island. Possible skills and insights she might be given there would dodge in like shadows, real but inarticulate, and she couldn’t make them plain to other people. She also had a small, superstitious dread of saying what she actually, irrevocably wished. And all of that wasn’t the point now, in any case—the Uncles needed to hear her tell them, “I love you. I’m sorry for when we’ve argued and I’m sorry for doing this.” The Uncles swallowed, breathed. “I love you.” She drove on. “I’m your girl. You’re my parents. You are. And I’m the best-brought-up person I know.”
Morgan shuddered twice against a cough and then couldn’t hold it. He started to drag in breaths, fish-mouthing. Looking at Mary, eyes softened with dismay, Bryn took Morgan’s hand. “You can’t know many well-brought-up people . . .” His voice had a fracture in the higher tones—it tended to splinter against emotion. She always wanted to kiss him when it did. “Still. You’ve turned out well. Just about. That’s the way you came, though, isn’t it?” Bryn kept looking, appraising, saving up this picture of her, an uncovered need about him. “We’ll be fine, all of us.” Mary could only sit and bear his attention—suddenly feeling uncomfortably adult and alone.
Morgan, ebbing back to himself, ears and face incandescent with harried blood, broke their concentration. “We love you, too, and we’re sure you have to go. We’ve talked all about it.” He looked up at her.
Mary laid her hands on the table’s edge, feeling the draw of the island, a cold, half-familiar tide.
“So . . .”
“Yes. It’s, I suppose . . .”
They were trying to take comfort in each other, Mary Lamb and Jonathan Davies, rushed into all of this. Not that they didn’t both want it now—it was only that they wished they hadn’t rushed.
If the furniture wasn’t here, making me think this is happening in the wrong place.
Mary was looking at her bed and finding it small.
We couldn’t have gone to Jonno’s, though, not with Mrs. Davies there. Not even with Mrs. Davies not there. Mrs. Davies is frightening.
God, Jonno, how do we do this?
There’d been plenty of room in her bed for her body, but she couldn’t quite see it holding the two of them. Although they would be close. They’d be in that position; those positions; the ones she could almost completely imagine when Jonathan wasn’t here, when they weren’t actually together, when everything still seemed possible. Now it was simply obvious that he wasn’t going to fit.
If I just jump for him, then we’ll be started. But I can’t. I suppose he can’t either. He hasn’t, anyway. But then he might not want to. Oh, Christ.
They had kissed, but were now just standing, dismally. Jonno reached and flopped at her jumper, lifted it quick, up and down again, to peek at her in a way that would have been funny, if she hadn’t wanted him to see her properly and gradually, but also just turn off the lights and not see anything for a bit.
Until we’ve got used to . . . things.
Mary was starting to feel slow, almost sleepy, her thoughts and movements clogging with a syrupy unease.
Jonno—if he gets self-conscious, if he squints, as he does—looking for problems, as if they’re there and seeable—then he’ll break something, he’ll walk into something, he’ll . . .
He won’t hurt me. I know he won’t do that. I do know.
Mary tried not to look at him as if she might be checking for a squint.
Then she sat on the bed. It sank beneath her, giving as obediently as ever. The Uncles had sat right here, at other times, had been here, indelibly.
It’s them watching—I can’t do this when everything feels like them watching; the books and the back of the chair and the pictures—they’re all looking at me.
Jonathan, from his face, seemed to be on the brink of sneezing, or crying. Mary lay down and said to the observing ceiling, “If we’d already done this, it would be all right. This wouldn’t be any bother if we were doing it again. I think.”
Jonno jumped a little at the sound of her. “You do want to? This is . . .” his hand tore idly at his collar, “something you want.”
“Yes.”
Now he sat on the bed, pressing against her waist with his back. “Really?”
Her attention screamed to the place where they touched, to the moment after this moment when they would touch more. The sound of his breathing staggered her blood.
“Really? Mary?”
She kept her eyes closed, concentrating on all of the times they’d been nearly at this point and not uncomfortable. “Really. Yes.”
The reality of his presence, of his complete availability, jack-knifed suddenly in her, beginning to loosen her reservations. She listened while he eased off his shoes.
Knock, knock.
She felt the dip and nudge and then the full arrival of his whole warmth there, stretching beside her, the first stiffness of his arms and then their familiar clasp around her, the first, joint give of their breath.
Knock, knock. Who’s there?
And then her speed was back, clock springing under his hands, breaking into an open glaze.
Who’s there?
Jonathan Davies.
That’s right.
They wallowed in a guddle of clothes, gently rucking about to uncover themselves, their hard facts. For a while, she couldn’t believe she’d ever be unpeeled, free and taut inside nothing but avid skin. She couldn’t believe the tremor of his arms against her shoulders as he lifted the entire, pale gift of himself to halt above her, one stroke of heat already near enough to touch.
That’s right.
Fluid appetite, jerked sound and give and purchase and anxious weight: their first words in each other opened out. There was a snag of hip bones, a failure of their beat, a sweet, raw collapse and then a flurry towards something better, their hands attentive and only a little desperate.
And no pain. Only an instant’s surprise, extinguished by monstrous want.
That’s right.
And nothing to distract her from biting him until she tasted metal and then straightening her spine for their next fit.
That’s right.
They slowed to blink at each other’s faces, somehow dazzled. He levered up from her again and he watched her watching the moving gleam of him: the round push and the draw of him and the pout and the cling and the shine of herself, just painting him with herself. They smiled, open-mouthed, making what they wanted and making more want.
She craned up to lick his chest and knew she was deeper than she’d thought. Each fall and oiling, tugging rise proved how well she held him, complete. She could feel herself becoming a pure astonishment.
That’s right.
This is the principal problem with living: it’s much more demanding than being dead.
Having found himself, once again, entirely unable to exit his own existence, Nathan had work to do. Failure to pull his own head off, or snap his spine, had left him in no state to sleep, so he’d sat up all through a screaming night and played music: filled himself with every available flavour and type, and then dozed through a rattling dawn. Now he was tired, but still glistening with unwilling life and washed and dressed and obliged to go and visit the Lighthouse and speak to Joe Christopher.
That was the deal. Anyone on Foal Island was free to put him- or herself in the way of dying at any time. Their aim should not be suicidal, but should make genuine efforts towards exposure to absolute risk. Joe was always keen that people should try their best. And, having survived, he was also keen that people tell him all about it.
And the really remarkable part, the part that kept Nathan consistently amazed, was that everyone here had, for their own little reasons, unreservedly agreed to this rather more than slightly unusual regime.
We’re all fucking cracked.
I know that I’m cracked.
Joe’s personal theory was that Technicolor, widescreen contact with the Beyond would inf
allibly compose itself into clear, metaphysical sense.
And seven tries for eternity are supposed to work the fucking charm. If I hear the fucking quote one more time, I will throw up, God fucking help me. “He shall save thee in six troubles. Yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.” Quoting the bloody Book of Job to me. Joe’s the only bastard who’d even try.
And anyone after a cure for anything—
Not that everyone on the fucking island doesn’t want a cure for something: loneliness, emptiness, bitterness, illness—any ness you care to name.
Anyone after a cure for anything was intended to find their states of mind and body had been altered by extreme experience. And, if not, it didn’t matter—the odd insight or enlightenment was pretty much guaranteed. And it kept them all safely out of other trouble and off the streets.
Joe, of course, really believed in the island cure—he wanted to be a saint.
Nathan, of course, really didn’t believe it—he just wanted to be a corpse.
An absolute cure for Nathan—take him all away.
Although, obviously, he lacked the necessary courage to be a single-handed and successful topper of himself. So he’d ended up here, only playing at death, on a rain-asphyxiated Welsh island, living in a demobbed army barracks in a religious retreat and writer’s colony. Nathan detested rain, Wales, islands, the army, religion and writers, above all writers. He had a passing fondness for retreat.
Living, Nathan had noticed, was also much more ridiculous than even the most rudimentary Eternal Rest.
“Come on, well.” Nathan tried to be stern but encouraging with his dog—a good dog, a sweet dog, a black, almost Labrador with a gentle, gundog mouth. “I don’t want to, either, but what I want’s got nothing to do with it. Eckless, come on.”
Nathan was still feeling the after-effects of his little sash-cord adventure. His throat flinched when he spoke, his head ached appallingly and the whites of his eyes were Bloody Mary red. What a sodding mess.
He patiently wrestled Eckless into his choke-chain and then jumbled at the dog’s ears in compensation. Another gallon or two of rain landed flat against the western window.
Eckless was Nathan’s health. After his operation he’d bought the dog, because a man who’s had one lung removed has to work and run and pant and ache himself into new sufficiencies of breath. The heart op boys take it easy, but the lung boys sweat. So far, he’d spent ten months fighting to swell the capacity of his left lung—the smaller of the two, but all he’d got and certainly better than none. Eckless had helped take the tedium out of dumbly pounding along the Embankment and back, wheezing in bitter handfuls of London air.
Now they were both adjusting to the sweep of an ocean climate, the rasping cleanliness of salt in their breathing, the virtually constant angling of their bodies into barging winds. Nathan knew the summer weather could be splendid here, he’d landed in a quite presentable June, but every waterlogged footfall and slaty morning was making him more certain that whole season had been a fluke.
He and Eckless cut north until they could walk in the lee of the wood—such as it was. Eckless was being precisely and wholeheartedly dogged. From his limpid eyes to his stoic tail and all along the rain-clotted hairs of his back, he made it clear he thought this a thoroughly foolish excursion, but made it equally plain that he would go with his master anywhere, to his last breath: that he loved him obediently, fawningly, utterly and far beyond deserving.
Nathan was setting a cruel pace, hoping to burn off some of the energy his freshly redelivered life seemed quite determined to provoke. He started up a little, splashing trot, jaw tightening with a tiny burn of rage.
He knew what Joe would ask him and he knew what he would say.
“What did you find out, Nathan? What did you bring back?”
“Well, Joe, I might respectfully remind you, this wasn’t a fucking day trip to Rothesay—I nearly died. ”
“But what did you find?”
Joe always wanted to know that, to rummage around in something which was, anyone would admit, a rather intimate experience. Suicide and self-abuse—both extremely private occupations.
“Not suicide, Nathan. An exercise in humility.”
Yes, indeed: Joe could sometimes be a smug, unnecessary cunt. Every time he’d say the same—as if everyone needed to be humbled, as if some people hadn’t actually been humiliated enough.
Nathan kicked out, gasps of air beginning to rip in his tender throat. A thick, crimson feeling began to rise about his head. He forgot his dog and rehearsed the speech he’d like to make at Joe.
What did I find? What did I bring back to tell you? Nothing. Fuck all. Because I do this for me and only me, because who the fuck else is there? And every time I get the same message—the one I got the last time and the time before that. You know and I know, when you’re steamed right back to your bone, when there’s fuck all else for you to find, then a big, fucking, comfy, intrusive narrative voice will say:
Love, Nathan—that’s the important thing. What you did and what you will do, what you have done—all that matters about it is loving. Do you do the loving thing? Because there is nothing else. You know there really is nothing else, don’t you? But do you have the balls for that, Nathan, or will you bottle out?
And of course I do. It’s not a fucking revelation. Do you seriously think I didn’t know that?
And I do have the bottle, I have the bottle every day. I could love for my country, if my country asked me to. I love every day—because, like it says in the Bible, Love never ends. Too right, it never fucking ends—and the process resembles nothing more closely than throwing half-bricks down an empty well, or throwing my fucking liver, my balls, my other lung . . . fuck.
If I nearly died and then Some Great Big Bloody Something decided to speak up and tell me how to stop, how to finish loving. Or told me how to get some fucking loving back. Then I would say, then I would say . . . I would.
He let the anger lift him, close his eyes and beat him forward across the uneven ground.
I would say that was a fucking genuine, fucking miracle.
His chest laboured and sucked unevenly, his saliva burned and thickened when he swallowed and his thoughts fell, became dark heats and colours. He outran them, outran himself.
And then he stumbled, twisted down on to spongy grass and roots which were uncannily like veins, he felt his voice snuffed out of his mind and then felt nothing at all.
Before Eckless clattered over him in a shower of momentum and whimpered concern, Nathan fought to sit up and catch at a blurry scrabble of paws. Eckless licked and panted for his face, while Nathan slapped at him feebly, “You stupid—” and then held him firm. The dog gave a small yelp of discomfort that briefly knotted Nathan’s pulse and set him patting at the animal, rocking it vaguely. Then he lay back flat again, with his mouth opened to the downpour, ribs still banging after his sprint and his hands comforted by live, bewildered fur.
Nathan wasn’t going to the Lighthouse. He’d decided. Bugger it.
“Joe won’t be pleased.” Lynda was in her dressing gown, as usual. She owned, maybe, four of them, all body-hugging, all furnished with strategic gaps and rents, and all silky—if not actually silk. Nathan had never thought it prudent to enquire after the various secrets of their manufacture.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to see him. There’s no point.”
She smiled with a slight forward motion, just enough to reveal her cleavage by another breath or two. “I’m glad you came here instead.” You couldn’t take it personally, she no longer even planned most of her nonsense. “Can I get you anything?” This said as she sat and crossed her legs with an inevitable shush of naked flesh, that slight bounce of her tits—still good for her age, one couldn’t deny it. “Richard’s still asleep.”
“I’m not surprised.” Nathan tried to tinge his look with some sense of masculine sympathy for Richard—a man sucked and fucked and harpied into unconsciousness so often that he now
seemed flimsy and barely opaque in certain lights.
“God, what have you done to your eyes, though?”
He’d been hoping, vainly, that she might not notice how red they were. But she slipped up towards him like a floral-patterned seal, heart set on an exhaustive investigation. She was fast on her feet, Lynda—unnervingly.
“Oh, I see.” She slid a knowing finger between his collar and his neck, saw the bruising.
“Well, of course you see, I’m letting you see. And I certainly can’t be the first man you’ve met who’s tried to hang himself, so don’t make such a fuss.” He fended her off to a workable distance.
“Can I at least mention, Nathan, that you’re soaking wet?”
“Now that you mention it, yes, I am dripping where I stand. I’ll take it as read that you’re only as moist as usual.”
She chose to ignore him and sat again with the tiniest trace of a sulk. “I presume you came to use our phone. Again.”
“Yes. Will Eckless be all right there?” The poor beast was slumped in a muddy hump on the floor. Not that Lynda would mind the mess—she’d just get Richard to mop up later. “I couldn’t have left him outside in this weather.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that. I could give him a quick rub with a towel.”
“Try it, if you like, he’ll be too tired to stop you. But remember he’s still a virgin, please.”
“What makes you such a cunt, Nathan?” With a cool, untroubled smile.
“You’d know far more about that than I. Is the phone still through here?”
“That’s right. Make yourself comfortable, do.”
Lynda and Richard’s cottage was a tubby, slump-roofed building, set near the old rabbit warren and, at one time—everyone liked to assume— must have housed persons concerned with the cultivation and gathering of cony meat. It did not escape Nathan that the wholesale raising and taking in of meat was one of Lynda’s principal occupations. Perhaps because of this, the building always put him in mind of some kind of trap. It was stiflingly cosy, choking with fat chairs and ruffled cushions, flouncing curtains and pelmets and tassels and lace and lace and lace. The place invariably made him feel he was close to choking.
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