Letters are allowed. He can’t fucking stop me writing them.
Technically, Mary was—like each of the other islanders—allowed to use the radio telephone once a week. Or she could have one crack at Joe Christopher’s phone and hope the old, undersea cable wasn’t feeling too skittish that day. In reality, calling was worse than useless. She could never entirely prepare herself for the shock of hearing the Uncles’ voices and of realising how far her memory could drift her away from the proper music of their conversations in even a few days. And neither Bryn nor Morgan had ever found themselves entirely comfortable with telephones.
“We’re too old.”
“For what, Bryn?”
“For speaking to people we can’t see. We’re not adaptable.”
She’d heard Morgan in the background adding his own loud murmur, “Speak for yourself.”
“Well . . .” She’d struggled to avoid their established gauntlet of questions, but still felt herself begin them. “You’re well?”
“Yes, yes. Both of us. You?”
“Yes. And I’m working away.” Except that’s a lie and I’m not, am I? I’m doing bugger all. I’m a dog sitter. That’s all Nathan thinks I’m good for.
“That’s great. You show them.”
Tell him. Tell him you want to come home. Admit it. “Bryn . . . Bryn, if I came back—”
“For another little visit? Yes, lovely, we’d like that. Morgan wants to speak to you now. He’s kicking me.”
She’d listened to the Uncles’ receiver being clumped from hand to hand and closed her eyes to see the hallway they were standing in. For a moment she could smell it: blankets, cooking steam, the tang of coal smoke, layer upon layer of passing aftershave. Bryn always handed on to Morgan, just when she’d reached the point of wanting to really talk. He always seemed to break the moment.
Now you’re being paranoid.
Except that it does seem that way.
I can’t blame him, really. Even if I burst into tears, what can he do about it, so far away?
“Mary?”
“Morgan. Yes. How’s the breathing?”
“Still doing it, yes. Here, you remember Dilwyn from Ianetta’s?”
Of course I remember, I’ve only been gone eight months—nine. Shit, nine months. That’s nearly a year and what have I done? Read whatever books he’s told me to, read them aloud whenever he’s told me to and talked and talked and talked about myself. He knows more about me than I do. I don’t even know why I’m here.
“Mary?”
“Yes, I remember Dilwyn, of course I do. Mad, isn’t he?”
“That’s the one. Well, he’s filled the caff up with pictures now—his own pictures—bloody horrible stuff. It’s all made out of watch parts and plaster and pieces of broken glass. Says it’s an art gallery and we can buy them if we like.”
Bryn added, shouting gently, “While they’re cheap.”
“Mary, love, this must be costing you a fortune.”
“No, I’ve told you, they pay for it.”
“Oh, all right, then. So . . .” Morgan had subsided into silence once again, dumbfounded by the idea of unlimited, gratis conversation. “You’re well, then?”
“Yes. Working away.”
“That’s good. That’s good. We’re well.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
And they’d jolted into their customary goodbyes, no better informed than when they’d started.
So letters are best.
You would like it here, in the bay. The tide is turning and front after front of water is pushing in. The sea keeps opening, then folding shut in furls and feathers of white. And I’m brown, very brown. I look like a completely different person, healthier I suppose. Not that I wasn’t healthy. My palms are pale, and in between my fingers, and the soles of my feet.
She paused, trying to remember she was writing to Bryn and Morgan rather than Jonno. So wouldn’t mention her pale shoulders, breasts and that she was not the kind of person to sunbathe naked, or anything like it—that the secrets of herself were covered. Unless, in other times and places, she wanted them otherwise.
Of course, Jonno was harder to write to, anyway. He didn’t reply to her any more. He’d said there was no point. At least, he’d written there was no point and when Mary had tried to phone him his mother had answered and told her to stop playing games. But Mary wasn’t playing, never had been. So she still wrote to him, for him, and for the Uncles, too—words that were as clear as she could make them, uninterrupted, hers. She tried to make a contact out of ink and paper and the slightest impression of summer sweat, she gave them the small and important things, the shapes of emotion and the absence of fear that a person can find and then trap in their own voice, in their own mind, and then wish to transcribe. She had begun to make meanings and patterns and sequences that she liked, that she wanted to give to the people she cared about. She wanted to speak out loud but inside other people: inside, the loudest place of all.
Yesterday, I lay in the grass above the sand cave. Everything shone. Down on my stomach, eyes level with the blades, it seemed that colour was inside the grass, sparking out, very young and golden. It is much easier to see here, perhaps because the sky is so limitless and bright. I wish you could come. I would show you all the parts of the island I enjoy, or that I’m enjoying for you. I want you to be here. I miss you.
“You what?”
Although Nathan knew Jack had not been drinking, he gave every appearance of being drunk—slower, louder, vocally incautious. “Hm?” Then again, Nathan had been drinking, so he might not be ideally positioned to judge.
“I said, I said—” Jack extended a syrupy-slow mock punch to Nathan’s shoulder. “You what? As in, what did you say?”
“I know, I was simply hesitating. I feel I’m about to be mocked.”
“Not at all. You are my friend. I do not mock my friends. No in-deed.”
“I said I miss her.”
“You are a dirty old fucker.” Jack smiled blithely.
“Cunt. I miss my daughter.”
“I rest my case.”
“Listen . . .” Nathan put down his umpteen-and-third whisky, vaguely feeling that he had, in some way, been bewitched into this liver-and-lights abuse on J.D.’s behalf. He had definitely been swindled somehow, in a manner he was, as yet, unable to identify. “Listen . . .” Fury rose and fell in him like stale water. “There is nothing like that going on. I just . . . I miss her. She’s . . . I’ve been . . . every day she comes and talks to me, because that’s the way I’m teaching her. She tells me about herself, her life—”
“Her mother?”
“No! Fuck it.” Having managed to top the level of Home Counties’ braying in the bar, he faltered, tried to smile at J.D.’s flinch of nerves. “No. I keep away from that—I’ve never really asked about her mother. But I have got used to . . . to Mary being there. I hear her, I mean, her voice still echoes about, even after she’s left. When I’m out walking, when I’m with the dog, or asleep, sometimes, I think with her pronunciations, the print of her mouth. She’s the one who’s meant to be learning how she says things, not me.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” A crest of melancholy broke over him, trickled down nastily. “I just like being with her, Jack. I should have been with her. All this time. All this fucking time. I’m owed fifteen years of her. I’m fucking owed it.
“And Maura gave her away. She bloody . . . she dumped Mary with her brother and his lover and that was it. Done. Brought up by uncles, for Christ’s sake. They did fine with her, but uncles . . . ? When she could have had a father. When she did have a father . . .”
J.D. slithered down from his stool and wrapped Nathan in a damp hug. J.D. was back to normal, sweating a touch or two more than the average. Nathan allowed himself to be squeezed at, to have his head taken in—he noticed—moderately tremulous hands. Even sober, Jack couldn’t keep quite dry and steady for too long.
And Nathan squeezed a
nd held and handshook back while want sliced in his stomach, because he did want—because he was full of want—because the touch of any live, whole body was so close to what he needed, so near to a sadly effective consolation. Because he wanted to hold his daughter: each of them knowing they were each other’s, loving and beloved. Because he wanted to hold his wife, to resurrect his kisses for her, to find himself at home again with a skin more than his own to take for granted, to take for a miracle and for everything he could want. He wanted what he wanted and anything else was not enough, was just a wholly unnecessary memento mori. But, being forsaken by all others, he clung to Jack.
“Nate? I do wish I could stay, but I’ve only got half an hour to get to Chelsea.” Jack was playing his strongest persona: the supportive editor: quiet, focused, gently optimistic, and currently easing himself politely from Nathan’s grip. “You’ll be . . . It’ll all work . . .” Jack folded his arms, clipping away inappropriate phrases, before he could finish them, struggling for something opposite, helpfully distracting. “It was a nice lunch. Really.” He coughed, rolled his eyes a fraction, so that Nathan might forgive his actual wording and concentrate on the more general idea of stout, brotherly, fortifying intentions. “Good to see you. You do—oddly—look well. Sea air and sunshine, hm? And, um, this was nice, a nice afternoon. I do like to check that booze is still available. Even if I don’t have any, the idea of continuing access calms me, I find.” He scooped Nathan’s hand up from the bar top, held it firm, “Have to go,” then set it down again.
An unexpected rush of bitterness smoked and coiled in Nathan’s lung, made him spit out, before he could stop, “You’ll fuck her.”
“I’ll . . . ?” Jack’s eyes narrowed for a wary instant. “Yes.”
“You’ll fuck her. Of course you’ll fuck her.” Nathan dug in, now perversely eager to stoke up his self-disgust, “So you make sure and fuck her right. For me. Hm? Will you? For me,” grabbing Jack’s elbow and clinging, quite the professional lush. “Have her all ways. Ride her, do her, whatever it takes. Make her—just make her do . . .” He couldn’t think quickly enough of just what a woman might be made to do. “Make her . . .” Fuck. He was being so stupid—annoying his friend, being a shit, “Make her . . . do things.” His voice snapped into a final, thin, appropriately adolescent croak. Even if he wasn’t really a shit at heart, he sounded like one.
Nathan didn’t want to look at Jack. He had no desire to know how much offence he’d caused. He’d noticed lately that he’d developed quite a knack for turning sympathy into disgust—now he’d probably managed to turn even Jack’s stomach.
Nathan realised he’d quite like to cry now, immediately.
“Nate,” Jack was rubbing at his neck, frowning with concern, but still shamingly affable, calm—this was not, after all, an unfamiliar situation. He’d been here before: sometimes the offender, sometimes the offended— sometimes with Nathan, more often without. “Nate, what I do with her and how will be entirely and precisely my own affair. But you,” he prodded Nathan’s shoulder, “in my opinion you should go back to the island, go back to Mary. And tell her who you are, before it all gets too late and really difficult. If you don’t mind my saying.”
“No, I don’t mind. Not at all, sorry—I mean, thanks. I mean, sorry. I’m going.” His voice losing its footing, falling beyond his reach. “I’m going tomorrow.”
“Good. And lighten up on the poor girl. All right, old man? If I’m not being presumptuous, I might suggest you take a wise old editor’s advice and leave her alone. Writers need leaving alone. Let them find out who they are and what they have to say and how they say it and let them be. Leave her alone—with your confidence. Then she’ll work like an angel, she’ll break her heart for you.”
“Broke mine already.”
“Shut the fuck up and go home.”
Shut the fuck up and go home.
Shut the furcup and gome.
Shuff the fuff, shuffthefuff, shuff.
Shu the. Shut the. Ach God, man. Get a grip.
The London Underground is never a good idea for the terribly pissed. Nathan had slithered down into the usual clammy summertime shove and fumble at Piccadilly Circus. He had, initially, felt not entirely out of control. After almost a week in the city, his island pace had speeded, his country nervousness had retired, he was—he’d thought—once again, resilient.
So the suddenly hideous progress of the escalator had only scared him for an instant or two. Part of him was now glad to be carried irresistibly forward by a petulant crush of tourists and tourist-loathers and plunged into the whole huge gauntlet of mouse-haunted tunnels and accidents waiting to pounce: death by suffocation in a panicked crowd, death by frying on the high-voltage rail, death by mincing and twisting under train wheels, death by knifing, clubbing, fucking or other molestation at the flailing hands of wandering lunatics, death by busking . . . No, actually, he wasn’t glad, he was losing it.
I don’t even get claustrophobia—this is sodding ridiculous. I am a capable, rational adult. Also I am rat-arsed and rubbered and fucked. But I am a capable, rational adult who is rat-arsed and rubbered and fucked and this should count for something, surely?
His voice was slurring in his head, mislaying his intentions.
Shit. I can’t feel my leg—some bastard has done something to my leg.
As the doors of his train dragged shut, vacuum-packing him in with Lord knew who, hysteria groped and sweated in every joint.
BREATHE. This is . . . this is . . . BREATHE. I won’t die. No. BREATHE. I won’t die. BREATHE.
Fat bastards, there are so many fat bastards in England. In this train, never mind England. In here with me—fat, English bastards, stopping me breathing. I ONLY HAVE ONE LUNG, YOU KNOW, AND RIGHT NOW I CANNOT FUCKING BREATHE.
BREATHE.
Bastards.
BREATHE.
He thudded out on to the platform at Green Park, buttered all over in free-floating horrors and the knowledge that he was audibly sweating whisky reek. But at least both his legs were whole, if not completely working—no one had done them damage except possibly the much-esteemed Mr. Jack Daniel.
Good old Mr. Jack. Mmmm hmmm.
Some people, he now found, had a kind of magnetism, a suction that would drag him, wavering, towards them. Ricocheting slowly, slowly along an especially elongated warren, tiled in screaming white, he couldn’t stop himself seeing, trotting towards him, healthy and content, a father. A father, happily loaded with a baby in a backpack, a baby in one of those little infant-containing haversacks, securely fastened and safely reinforced. A father, giddied-up by the soft and rhythmic sway of his sleeping child’s feet. A father who looked at Nathan and made him know, all over again, that he was a nothing, a no-balls loser, a man who was not a father in any way.
Shut up. Enough. Enough, you cunting . . . you . . . you just leave me alone.
The father met Nathan’s eyes, half-smiling, almost seductively contemptuous.
Yeah, you’ve got it a-a-a-a-ll now. See trying to keep it? See possession— you’ll fucking learn about that. And you don’t even know what you’ve got, do you? Do you—you stupid prick? English prick, bastard.
Between Green Park and Pimlico, Nathan swam up the aisle for a seat, dropped into it like the heavy and very suspicious package he knew himself to be.
Shit. I can’t read the adverts. Fucking eyes won’t do this business. Don’t read the adverts, then you just have to look at the people, the eyes. Look at the eyes, and the people will know that you hate them, they’ll turn, they’ll rip you to liquid and buttons before you can scream. Think of you, painted against the inside of the windows, pale little finger stumps, swirling a clear space for the last look out through your own gore.
He sponged his forehead with cautious inaccuracy. His extremities had passed beyond the point of even fundamental usefulness. He could only shut his eyes for a little and buckle his arms woodenly round his chest and hope that he’d make it up and out and into
daylight again at any point today. Meanwhile, alcohol had prised up his memory’s cruellest lids like a reckless chisel end and he sat, rocked by sideways motion and bewilderment, knowing he was now at the mercy of himself, of his own most acidic recollections.
We were on the Underground, here. I put my hand over hers while we sat and she never stopped me. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, down all that side of me, it was like sunburn, I could just feel her there, shining into me, and we were bobbing and rubbing and everything together with the train taking corners and nice wee accelerations and stops and I couldn’t bear to turn, even just glance at her in case she wasn’t looking dead happy, like I was looking dead happy—in my reflection, I could see—big mad grin, I had. Two Celts together, wanting to be together, on a subtly, subtly alien train. There I was with my very own ’45 Rising: fucking splendidly impatient against an unforgiving button fly. That was all it took to lift me, to set my brain baying down to my balls—the roundness of her knuckles against mine. I told her, “You shouldn’t be on that side, it’s dangerous. On that side, you’re right against my hungry arm. I have a hungry arm. It likes to hold things, people. It would like to hold you.” Throttled that last bit, swallowed it before it was out, almost, but she still kissed me, she still did that, she still did.
The platform at Victoria hauled past him clumsily and Maura’s absence laced between his fingers and his hips, like razor blades and wonder, delighting him open to the bone.
Bitch. She’s still a bitch, though. Bitch.
But I do still . . . I do still . . .
Bitch.
A sour heat fluttered in his chest. He coughed. A spasm of warning arced behind his eyes.
No. I am not going to. Not when I’m like this. I know better. I do know better. I absolutely will not think about that.
But it was too late—he couldn’t help coughing again experimentally. A dark fumble seemed to rise in a treacly bubble under his ribs and then thicken below his throat, threatening.
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