This is crap, this is bollocks, this is bad imagination. When there was really something wrong, I didn’t feel it. Well, I did feel it, but not that way. Really something wrong—your body tries to tell you . . .
No. This is shite.
Even so, the awful recitation bucked into life.
There is nothing wrong. If you think there is something wrong, then you will worry. You already worry about Maura, about Mary, about life, because all of them are something wrong, but you can’t think they are wrong things, because you will worry. If you worry, you get cancer. If you worry about getting cancer, you get cancer. If you worry about worrying, you get cancer. If you worry about having cancer because of worrying you’ll get cancer, then you really shouldn’t worry because, in fact, you’ll know. Y ou do have cancer—you worried until you made it come back.
So before it’s too fucking late, you will think and believe there is nothing wrong.
I can feel it, though, I can feel it. It’s in there. I know.
Nathan understood his anxiety was dripping through him, curdling his only lung into alien solidity, death by drowning.
I can feel.
Nathan shut his eyes and breathed gently. He monitored each press and sag of air, the turning of his tides, and discovered no more than smooth normality.
This is how far you’ve come, then. Waiting for your breath to stop exactly the way you used to when you were five—lying in bed and listening to yourself. Any self-respecting little bastard would have been reading bad things under the covers, eating sweeties, feeling his dick. But you. Not sodding you.
His hands were clawed up, twitching, Fight or Flight oozing out all over them. Opposite, a man in an eager business suit was reading a sheaf of photocopied sheets, headed “Strategy is an Adventure!”
From the look of him it would be, poor fuck. At long last—a sad cunt who is definitely sadder than me.
Having shuffled back along the Embankment against a gritty wind, Nathan unlocked his old flat in the Square. It never had been very welcoming, but now it was positively brusque. Over the months, his cleaning person had slowly re-arranged what belongings he’d left to suit her taste. He didn’t live here any more.
But, with a vaguely larcenous thrill, he could take a shower here and watch his first television in months here and then consider rummaging round here to find something edible and possibly also something intoxicating because he did not in any way wish to be hungover until tomorrow morning, thanks a lot.
So Nathan lay on his sofa, wrapped in a clammy towel, and growled abuse at news of the incoming Citizens’ Charter, vaguely defining civic joys long gone. And he stared at shots of burning oil wells, left over from a grubby little war: photogenically and nastily conducted while he’d been gone. Then he remote-controlled the lot of it to the Land of Gettofuck and drank himself completely cretinous.
Shit.
A wind tumbled uneasily across his windows, trying to feel its way out of the Square. He couldn’t find his breath. Swallowing, already choking, choked. Dread with its fist in his throat, twisting, burning.
Nathan fought to sit up against a dark that seemed to be squatting on his shoulders.
Shit.
He stood, finally managing a wheezy inhalation, another, another, until his eyes teared over with the pain and he remembered to reverse the process, stop himself choking all over again with spit and fear and speeding air.
When he stumbled forward, a low invisible something bit him across both legs and he fell to his carpet, still panting and now letting his fingers dabble and panic against his shins, where the first unmistakably sticky welling of blood was under way.
Jesus shit.
He crawled and tumbled to his doorway and the light switch and blinked back at his traitorous room. Across the fawn carpet—
These fucking places—always the white carpets, the cream carpets, the carpets designed for people who never fucking touch the ground. I should have changed it, changed it as soon as I fucking moved in, changed it to fucking black. Shit.
Shit, I thought I was dying, I thought I was dying—sleep on your back when you’re rubbered, serve you right, I thought that was fucking it.
Across the fawn carpet were bloody drag marks, suggesting a hideous murder and body theft. These led directly to his legs—smeary with gore from deeply and generously bleeding gouges: one taken out just beneath each knee. Along an edge of his glass-topped coffee table—
The fucker, the cunt, the Filipino Psychofuckingpath—she is a cleaning woman, not a fucking interior bastard designer—my table never used to be there. Why in God’s name put it there and think I’ll remember?
Along one edge of his glass-topped coffee table—a table quite impossible to see in the dark—was an impressive smear of Nathan’s blood and even, he thought, a clump or two of his substance.
Great. Sodding, fucking great.
The blood he decided to leave because he was a novelist not a cleaner and a little scare of haemoglobin left behind might be just the thing to teach someone who was a cleaner to stick to their duties and no more.
It was one in the morning, he noticed—soon be daylight again. Nathan hated the openness, the sheer exposure of summer days. Emptiness always seemed far more empty when it was well lit.
He showered again, legs pulsing impressively with affronted pain and managing to bleed through four Elastoplasts. Hugging himself in a fresh towel, he plodded damply off to sit on the edge of his bed—that was, at least, still where it should be. He lay back, feet still on the floor, and allowed a dizzy rush of apprehension to paw at him: here were his shattered family, his flagging body, his failing nerve, the fatal transformation of his lung; here, at last, and after all prevarication, was his guaranteed death. He shuddered under it, the warmth of his cosy brain attempting to writhe away from the cold and the blank, the thought of himself as not himself, as voiceless, as not.
Then Mr. Jack stepped in. The merciful dregs of inebriation backwashed home with just enough insanity to suggest his best available distraction—self-abuse.
It would be risky, he realised that. He was quite unhinged enough to think of what he shouldn’t, of Maura, really Maura, the best ways she used to be—pink, pink nipples, sugar-mouse nipples, cunt hair like tawny, downy, auburny, sphagnummy kind of stuff that could get so wet, so fast— think of it, think of it, think—of pulling down her knickers and a line, a thread of thick, bright, oystery, sex-lubricating, fucking desire would just be there, hanging from her quim for nobody but Nathan to lap all up and gather away and suck out more of until he didn’t die and didn’t think of dying, only ran right into her, right into her, right into her, right into her, right home.
Maura. Maura. Please.
He shivered, chilled, shrank and the weight of the unobtainable rushed in at him from every side—Maura, completely wanted and completely out of reach. She’d made him admit it again, all to no purpose. A slow tear ran from his left eye back along his temple and dropped coldly into his ear. He ought to get up.
Jesus.
Standing, vaguely giddy, his body still anxious for a dream of touch, he examined his bed. His flat was fast becoming a forensic paradise.
“First, Inspector, the bloody living room, where he struggled to open his veins with a sharpened table. Next the spattered bathroom where he soaped himself into a frenzy, teasing at his body hair with multiple adhesive dressings. And finally the bedroom—the dark blue duvet cover particularly frank in its display of air-dried jism. Here the first shot, here the second, here the third and here the characteristic smearing left by hand and knob-end wiping. Strange that he saw no reason to cover his tracks.”
But why the fuck should I? This is all I’ve got. The least a man can do is leave his mark.
Jesus, what a mess.
Tired, aching, stupefied with solitude and toxins, he could no longer dodge that sleek and dogged, inoperable thought.
I don’t want to be this way. Dear God, don’t let me have to keep on be
ing this way. Please. I’ll do anything. If you’ll only tell me what.
There came, as he’d expected, no particular revelation.
Eckless was beside himself, incandescent with happiness, muzzle resting firmly on Nathan’s knee, the better to gently damp through his trouser leg. Although his dog didn’t usually come to the Sunday Lunch, Nathan hadn’t the heart to leave him behind today. Eckless, in return, was being even more than usually well behaved. He neither snuffed nor groaned when he caught the scent of meat, didn’t make a sound at any time, in fact—he seemed perfectly contented with leaning against Nathan and feeling and understanding that he was back.
Mary passed Nathan the gravy, “You were missed,” and watched him slop it right over the edge of his plate.
“Missed? I was?”
“Yes, missed. By the dog. Last night he hardly slept, kept waking up with his ears pricked and his little tail wagging and then he’d realise he’d just been dreaming—I suppose of you—and then he would come and bother me.”
“Oh, right. The dog.” Nathan mopped his gravy off the table with his napkin before working out this would make it too wet to put back on his lap. He seemed nervous to Mary, and tired. “He doesn’t have a little tail. It’s quite in proportion to his body length.”
She’d wondered how long it would take him to find fault: even if he had seemed different when he got back, more pleasant, more comfortable company. As far as she could tell, he’d been openly, simply delighted when Eckless sprinted to him and bounced up to paw and whine and lick and nuzzle at him in a tense, canine delirium of affection and relief.
Perhaps because he’d been so much surrounded with dog, Nathan had seemed positively human then, had even given her a light, darting hug. Eckless had pushed Nathan’s back and jolted him closer to Mary for a moment while they were still embraced, but Nathan hadn’t scolded, had simply smiled and then turned to settle the beast, no harm done. Still, she should have known it wouldn’t last: Nathan being good-tempered. He wasn’t the good-tempered sort.
“Unless you meant, by little tail, to imply that he was vulnerable, smaller than us, smaller than his own emotions, and an animal for which you have affection—affection you wish us to share. You would, of course, have been right, if you’d used the diminutive for those reasons.”
“Then I was right.”
And fuck you, Nathan. She forked at her carrots with displaced resentment. I was trying my best to be nice. I actually sat next to you, even though you never really speak to me when I do. Unless it’s to get on my case. Not that we can’t all play that game.
“When you say we, is that the royal we?”
“Hm?” Nathan was manfully trying to subdue a piece of beef—it was proving to be a ferocious, gristly mouthful: too big to swallow whole and too resilient to bite.
“Your use of we—how did you intend me to understand it?”
Nathan stared straight ahead, eyes watering, a queasy shiver in his throat. “Hmnn?” Mary watched him, the shift of muscle in his patchily shaved jaw, the sinews of his neck that could stiffen so quickly, roping in against emotions she could never quite identify: presumably loathing, irritation, dislike.
And yet, although she found this surprising, she did seem to feel, watching perspiration gather quietly above his eyes, that the island was rather better when he was around. Something about the place seemed less solid when he wasn’t here. Not necessarily less pleasant, but definitely less solid. She watched the side of his face and tried to consider how he might actually, really be, looking out from that particular, cantankerous, Nathan viewpoint.
He knows I’m looking at him and doesn’t like it—doesn’t like it at all. Shame that I’m not going to stop, then.
It’s his own fault—he’s always going on at me to sharpen up my powers of observation. So, why not sharpen them on him?
“Now then, you two . . .” Joe, careful as ever of his ill-assorted flock, had decided an intervention was required. “This is Sunday, this is the Lunch. We don’t want you coming to blows.”
Grateful for the brief distraction, Nathan relieved his soft palate of its burden, quickly depositing on the side of his plate what appeared to be a well-masticated length of especially hairy, cow-flavoured twine.
Mary, for her part, chose to concentrate on her broccoli, aware that Joe was still studying her closely.
Giving me a bit of my own medicine—it’s just like him.
He was making her feel guilty, as he often did. Something about his manner, his shine, seemed always to render her inadequate or vaguely ashamed.
“Mary?” Rather than force her to ignore him for any longer, Joe called to her—gentle, friendly, something smoky, or floury, about his voice which made it very easy to listen to and, therefore, very effective when it decided to serve up even the gentlest reproach. After all, it seemed to imply, how could she not want to face him and chat with him honestly: how could she manage to be so intimidated by his patent goodness when goodness was such a good thing: how could she still believe, however discreetly, that he was mad?
“Mary?”
She did what he wanted: lifted her head and met his eye. He rewarded her with one of his pristine, grandfatherly smiles.
“Ah, there you are. Lost in thought, were you?”
“I, um. Yes.”
“Not working too hard? Nathan pushing you?”
“No.” She hadn’t intended to snap that, but had managed to, all the same. Nathan shifted slightly beside her and coughed, while she made a point of repeating, “No. He’s not.”
No, Nathan isn’t pushing me. He isn’t anywhere bloody near me, would probably rather I never ever wrote a word. I would say he’d be pleased if I went back to Capel Gofeg and left him alone.
“Well, that’s all right, then.”
“She’s doing very well.” Nathan cleared his throat again and prodded the last of his beef despondently. “Actually . . . Very well indeed . . . If you asked me . . . That would be what I would say.”
Mary tried not to look as utterly astonished as she felt. Very well indeed? She also made an effort not to be pleased, but couldn’t avoid it, couldn’t avoid the hot, electric inrush of something so fundamentally, privately, thoroughly satisfying that it made her blush. That Nathan, of all people, could make this change in her, seemed almost offensive.
God, Mary Lamb, you’re perverse. The opinion that’s most indifferent has to be the only one that you respect.
Although I suppose it makes a kind of sense. If I’m ever allowed to write anything again and Nathan reads and actually likes it . . . Well, I’d know it was good, then, wouldn’t I?
“Yes.” Nathan frowned at her briefly, his eyes making their usual scramble to avoid hers, after a small touching, a second’s lock. “Yes, that’s what I would say.”
Beyond Mary and Nathan, the Lunch continued, each of the seven guests establishing and then breaking the usual pools and bubbles of concentration, overhearings dominoing from one conversation to the next while cooling vegetables passed like Chinese whispers—never entirely coherent or attractive by the time they’d reached the circuit’s end.
“Now, the Seven Brothers. You know about the Seven Brothers?” Mary realised that Louis, tucked beside her on the left, had probably been talking to her for some time. He seemed to have given himself the task of translating the island for her, unveiling all its little histories and dialects.
“Ahm . . .” She blinked her mind into some kind of focus. “The Seven Brothers—they’re the rocks across from Nathan’s bay.”
“Yes, excellent. That’s them.” Louis speared his ninth, tenth and eleventh potatoes, making sure they were thoroughly glazed with butter first. “They’re a beautiful case of meaning deepening through time. There have been seven rocks for goodness knows how long, of course. But, during different periods, they have been used to define entirely different things. At one point they were the Seith Marchawg, the Seven Riders of the Mabinogion, left behind to steward Britain whe
n the men of the Island of the Mighty sailed to Ireland. This means they all have names: Cradawg, Hefeydd the Tall, Unig Strong-shoulder, Iddig, Ffodor, Wlch Bone-Lip and Llashar.”
Mary nodded and reached to take another potato herself—not to eat, just to fiddle with and pass the time.
It’s not that he isn’t a nice man: I think he’s lovely. But once he gets the bit between his teeth, he doesn’t stop. It was the same with Morgan and plumbing—nothing would please him more than a well-turned-out public convenience. Nothing except describing it endlessly.
She noticed she was thinking of Morgan in the past tense and stopped herself. He was still there, still back in Gofeg with Bryn, and his obsessions which, at this distance, seemed almost completely lovable. She took a moment to hope that Morgan—present tense—was currently delivering an encomium on washers. She hoped he was well.
“Of course, later, the seven rocks are the seven deadly sins, cast out of the island by Joseph of Arimathea and petrified as a memorial. That would mean that we are living on an island without sin. Quite a consideration. The Seven Brothers—well, I suppose they would be much the same thing—a memorial to sin.
“A planted Tudor lord sacked and burned the monastery that was said to have been founded on this island. Then he drove off the monks and the other islanders and had his men row all of his very finest horses out here to graze. He believed that his horses were far more intelligent and worthwhile than any of the common run of people. And the island was to be a place for his fine mares and stallions to breed even finer stock, safe from sabotage and theft.
“But all did not go well here. The horses turned barren and sick and none of the lord’s servants could, or perhaps would, do anything to cure them. Finally, the lord sent his youngest son to tend the horses, but before he could reach the island a thick, white mist rose up and hid him from sight. By nightfall, the mist had cleared as suddenly as it came and the son’s boat had drifted back into harbour, carrying all his supplies and even the clothes he had been wearing when he set out, but there was never any sign of him alive again and his body was never found.
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