She was studying the air beyond Mary’s face, peering softly at a point where it seemed she might soon begin to see some final satisfactory explanation of the past. Mary realised that Maura, completely, unusually, still like this, was
lovely. Odd word to use about your mother. But she is. Lovely. You could look at her and be lost.
So we’re not alike.
I’d have noticed if I had that—that loveliness.
“Sometimes . . .” Maura broke Mary’s dream, speaking it away, “some days, everything seemed natural—the way that a father and a daughter ought to be—but then I’d see his eyes, and I’d know he was still working, studying you, writing you somewhere, out in the back of his mind. Even when he was playing with you—he was sort of waiting, too—until you were old enough to be like him. By the end, he was already reading you pages and pages of things you couldn’t understand, things you shouldn’t understand, sometimes until you’d fall asleep. You were happy enough, but you were changing—he was starting to make you serious—his kind of serious. He wouldn’t let you stay a child.”
“You told him how you felt?”
I don’t remember any of this, not a fucking thing. I mean I just see a lawn, sometimes, maybe, sunshine, but . . . not really anything.
“Yes, I told him. And he promised that he’d change, relax more around his daughter, take it easy—really, he would say anything I wanted—but he couldn’t keep the promises. He couldn’t just be easy with you. He wasn’t an easy man.”
Maura leaned forward and pressed the back of Mary’s hand. “He wrote more and more and lived less and less. I didn’t want to leave him, but he’d already left me. I was tired of him getting up in the small hours, or coming to bed when I was asleep. The noise of his bloody machine, batting away. I forgot what he was like. Or I decided it was better if I tried to. We started fighting all the time. I had to go. Sorry.”
“I’m sure you did your best.” That didn’t sound as if she meant it.
Maura stared across at her with a flat, cool look. “Have you ever made love to a man and been absolutely sure he wasn’t thinking of you? Better than that, have you been completely certain that he was comparing you to a woman who didn’t exist, a woman he’d made to please himself, a woman he spent every day with? Or did you know that he’d take all the best of you and then tell it to somebody else?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I hated it when your father’s friends came round to visit. One man in particular, his eyes on me always felt too well informed. I felt as if I’d been sold to them.” She breathed a laugh. “And, I suppose, I had.”
Mary knew she was flushing slightly, but couldn’t slither back from asking, “He didn’t . . . ? I mean?”
“What?” Maura laughed. “Oh, no. There was nothing . . . triangular going on. Except for in our minds.” She laughed again—this time a narrower, cooler sound. “But then, with your father, the mind was everything.”
Mary shut her eyes—one weight too many loaded on and the balance of calm betrayed. A hope she hadn’t known about was falling, spinning and splintering in her as it lanced down. She’d wanted better, something cleaner, or something neater than this.
“Mary. Mary?”
She wanted to raise her head when Maura called her, but couldn’t. A breath shivered in her throat.
“Mary, I didn’t mean to say that he wasn’t a good man. I didn’t ever mean that. He was very . . . he loved you.”
Mary shook her head, wishing she could cry now and not caring if it showed, but being—instead—pressed, throttled by an arid pain.
“He loved you. You mustn’t think he didn’t. You don’t know. I told him that he couldn’t see you and I made him agree. Because I couldn’t see him—not without taking him back. Even with everything so wrong, I would have taken him back. He was, he was—he was so close to being worth it. He was almost worth anything.”
Mary let her hands be lifted, held.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of in him.”
They talked until the last of the evening had gone, until the room was yellow with street light. Mary found herself growing calmer, more assured, while Maura grew more anxious, attentive, motherly.
“I should go now, it’s getting late.” She didn’t know what to call her— Maura, or Mother.
“Have something to eat.”
“It’s late.”
“You can stay here. I have a spare room. It won’t be any bother.”
“No, really, I’m fine.”
“I haven’t done this well, have I?” Maura stood, turned on the lamp and frowned at Mary through its unaccustomed glare. “Have I?”
“No, you’ve been . . . This has been . . . what I needed.”
“I meant that I haven’t done any of this well . . . this being a mother.”
“You’ve . . . I—”
“It’s all right. I know.” She lifted her second pack of cigarettes and shook it—empty. “You’re sure you won’t stay?” worrying her hair away from her eyes. “No, of course you won’t.” She looked immensely tired.
“Nathan—from the island—he got me somewhere in Pimlico. Somewhere I can stay.”
“Nathan.”
“Staples.”
“He’s looking after you well?”
“Yes.”
“Does a good job?”
“Yes.” A small flare of nice awareness prickled through her slowly—not enough to disturb her, she was too tired—just enough to feel good. “Yes, he does a great job. I’m very . . .”
Fond of him? Close to him? More? Feeling the kind of thing you would tell your mother? If you knew your mother.
“You’re very . . . ?”
“I’m very pleased.” Mary picked the word randomly, but it seemed to serve.
“Good. Then I give him my best.” She met Mary’s eyes—one deep catch of enquiry, almost of need. “If you wanted to tell him that, it would be OK—that I give him my best.”
“All right. I will.”
Mary went back to the Square in the minicab her mother paid for with a quick, determined press of too much money, folded into Mary’s hand. Sitting back, in motion, half-watching unknown streets and lights, Mary sensed herself beginning to be clean, somehow, scooped out and settling into a slightly different form. She thought she might be happy quite soon, doing what she wanted and—perhaps—in love. The idea, the temperature of loving slipped in thin as paper while the journey rocked and nudged.
I think he loves me back. I think.
If he did, I would love him.
Passing the Square’s embankment façade, she noticed that part of the ornamental ironwork made exactly the shape of the wicked queen’s crown from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—exactly the pattern of something that she hadn’t known she knew. Somewhere she must have seen an illustration. Somewhere, when she was younger, still a child.
She went to bed certain, as she realised she’d always hoped she could be certain, that in her father she had nothing to be ashamed of, and that he was, tonight, hers and alive. She slept for fifteen hours, quite dreamlessly.
Nathan dreamed of eggs. They were impressively large eggs, above knee height, and sitting up on end together like a huge clutch of accusing Humpty Dumpties. He was pacing round them, mother-hennish, adjusting the warm, blood-soaked towels that they were draped in and trying to figure out just how many of these oddly incalculable objects there were.
When he woke, sweaty and unnerved, he was still desperately trying to count. Because—it was achingly plain to him—the eggs were his books. They were the secret of his books, they were the number of books that he would write, all swaddled up like threats and promises in a sticky fug of his own blood. And he couldn’t help asking
What if I’ve used them all, written them all away? What if I’ve got nothing left?
God, you’re a sick fuck.
Yes, well, never mind all that. Have breakfast, take out Eckless, get yourself established in the day
and then go and see her. She didn’t come round yesterday and she was back, Joe went to fetch her and then, later, I could see her light. But she could have been tired, or just feeling antisocial, there could have been lots of reasons for her not popping in to see me, many of them unalarming. She didn’t phone me while she was away, which was disappointing, but possibly quite understandable—her being busy and all that . . .
He glowered again at his new mobile phone. Everyone on the island had one now. Joe had decided that they should all embrace a convenient touch of technology. God knew what the point was in Nathan’s case. Now and again he would check if it was working, if he’d got the bloody thing turned on, but Mary hadn’t called him in all of the time she was gone. And, to be honest, neither had any other bastard.
Dressed a little more presentably than was strictly necessary, he made a pot of tea and some rounds of toast and then set them out with the usual accompaniments before staring at the whole assembly until it was cold and congealed and completely beyond consumption.
I don’t know how she’ll be.
I don’t know.
My wee woman, I don’t know how she’ll be.
Later in the day, anxious to keep himself busy, Nathan walked Eckless inland, close to the lochan. This was asking for trouble, he knew, because the place was always a bedlam in the spring: neurotic birds bickering thickly on the tiny central islet, like a huge, soprano, dysfunctional family. If anyone came near them, especially Eckless, the whole crew howled upwards into a ragged funnel of outrage, dingy bodies spinning like flakes of ash above some huge, invisible blaze.
In response, Eckless bayed and leaped, leaned himself against his unaccustomed leash until approaching strangulation and excitement made him cough. Although, Lord knew, even running loose, he’d do barely any damage. Nathan had seen him cowed by a single herring gull before now. The dog lacked the will for killing. But he did like to pretend.
Like master, like dog.
“Enough, though, you silly bastard, calm down.”
Not that Nathan was calm himself. He only ever came here for badness, for the joy of annoying already cantankerous gulls and being in the midst of a chaos that was in no way threatening. Although he would occasionally be dived at—all part of the fun.
“What on earth are you doing?” Richard’s approach had been masked by the uproar. “They’re breeding.”
“Lucky them.”
“You shouldn’t disturb them.”
“I don’t. Often. Anyway, you’re here too. Being disturbing.” He noticed Richard looked even more haggard than normal. “What’s up?”
“She’s leaving.”
“What?” Nathan truly was surprised. He’d never imagined Lynda and Richard’s marriage as being anything other than purgatorial, but he’d also never imagined them apart. “Permanently?”
“America. She says she can’t stand it here—too cold, too much like a madhouse.”
The feathery squeals and shrieks about them were shredding their sentences. Nathan found himself carefully mouthing, “Well, for once, she’s not wrong.”
Richard gripped Nathan’s arm with a thin snarl, its sound ripped away. “She won’t say if she’s coming back. But you don’t give a shit, do you? You never fucking think of anyone but yourself. My wife is leaving me. You, of all people, might be expected to understand . . .” He panted quietly, through bared teeth.
“Yes, OK. It’s only nerves, you know: trying to laugh through the crisis—it’s the way I’m made.” Nathan checked Richard’s expression, tried not to look sympathetic, but only like a man who did, indeed, understand. “I take it you’ve been up all night.”
Richard nodded, winced his eyes shut.
“Then you should go home.” Nathan patted at Richard’s arm and felt him shiver. “But you could head over to my place instead. I’ve just replaced my emergency whisky again—you might as well get into that. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll probably join you. In the end you will have to feel it, but I am of the opinion that if you want to be numb with exhaustion, or alcohol or self-inflicted pain or any other fucking thing you can think of, then you should just go ahead. You have every right.”
They began walking seaward again, Eckless tugging to play some more, a single scouting bird braced in the air above them, crying their position back to the lake.
“If she’s going, I should go.” Richard was sounding more and more punch-drunk. “I don’t know why we ever came here.”
“Because Joe asked you, like he asked me, like he asked everybody.” Richard snapped him a look. “All right—we came here because we’re not fit for anywhere else. That’s why we came and that’s why we stay. At least, that’s the way it is for me.”
“And that’s why we kill ourselves.” Richard let out a nasty laugh. “What did Joe tell you would happen if you managed the seven steps? If you actually didn’t die. What did he say would happen that would be so fucking good?”
“He doesn’t say—you know that.” Nathan fumbled around the vague nausea that always came when he found himself defending Joe. “We stay here . . . because here there are people like us. We can belong and hate each other lovingly—like a family. And we can get . . . whatever’s wrong with us right. Or make it not matter, or whatever the fuck we’re after, or think we’re after. We can get what we need. Apparently.”
“You believe that? That we’ll get what we need?” Richard stopped. Nathan turned to him and recognised the look he must have had himself for years—the look of a man fighting lacerating appetite.
Richard couldn’t help himself reaching for hope. “Well, do you? Do you believe that?”
“I don’t believe anything else.” Which was certainly fucking true. Nathan was an empty enough man to stay here and give Joe’s craziness a try. And the island had given him Mary: Joe had given him Mary, he couldn’t argue with that. A small and pleasant combustion unfurled in his lung—he’d be off to see her soon.
I’ll find out how she is. What she heard about her father.
The combustion flared, anxious, dropped again.
“I . . .” Richard rubbed at his eyes, tiredness visibly stroking over him, numbing his mouth. “I would like to—thank you—come back with you, but I won’t. I can’t. She’ll, she’ll still be there. You know—at ho . . . I have to . . . be there, too.”
“OK. I understand.” Nathan thought of saying more, of giving the poor fuck a hug to speed him on his way, but Richard stumbled round, surprisingly quick in an unsteady way, and trudged back towards the lochan, taking what wasn’t remotely his quickest way home. Nathan didn’t call him back, let him step down to the first anxious spinning of wings, the outbreak of visible madness, screeling and gyring in the air. Best place for him.
He didn’t mean to watch. At first, it didn’t even feel like watching—only a glimpse of something and then the natural turn of his head to find it out.
Nathan had dawdled home, trying to think of how he should be, how best to slip in on Mary casually. Eckless, still leashed, had given up tugging out Morse reminders of his unwillingly tethered state and mooched along beside his master, washed out with a good morning’s baying and quite possibly lost in wolfish daydreams of dominated feathers and freed blood.
They passed by the back of Nathan’s house, his bedroom window, the skip of shade behind it, someone inside.
Mary?
Perhaps if she’d noticed he was there, hadn’t been so intent, it would never have happened. And he would never have found himself observing, his heart like a frog on a spike, kicking and twitching clammily.
Mary had moved to stand with her back to the window, facing the head of his bed. Something about the quality of her pause, the tension plain in her spine made him pause, too, and only look—not trot up and knock the glass, smile his hello.
Then quickly, smoothly she knelt near his pillow, her hand at the pale angle of open sheet where he’d left his covers back. His breath furrowed and locked while she leaned forward, rested her he
ad where his had lain and waited—he knew, waited—until her skinheat raised his scent from the cloth, until it felt right to ease her fingers between the sheets, push in deep to the wrist.
No.
Wax-mouthed, he braced himself against the touch of her thinking, the crawl at him of her wanting the man he wasn’t, couldn’t be: of her taking and crumpling his quite different colour of love to nothing but the new, grey sweat that covered him.
No.
Pulling Eckless up out of his slump, Nathan backed, staggered, almost fell away. He didn’t stop going until the cottage was blinded to him, no windows in sight, and then he dropped to the grass, sick pain in his legs and hands.
Her eyes had been closed. Of course. He knew the drill. All through the bad days at the end, he’d lain on her mother’s bed every single afternoon and done the same: aching and shifting and breathing Maura’s separate sleeping in, right in, eyes always shut to keep out any traces of impossibility. It must be in their genes: like father like daughter: their capacity for longing.
Eckless whined, confused at being so close to home without going inside it. He gave a single, pettish bark, quite loud enough for Mary to hear him in the house.
Which is the way to do this. The only fucking way. To warn her of my arrival, make her stop.
Shit. Just, shit. If I’d told her, this would never have happened. If I’d just fucking said who I was.
He clapped at Eckless, dunted his neck, mock wrestled him by the front paws until he was fixed in a happy frenzy. Then he let the dog loose. Eckless crouched and stared for a moment, wondering whether to run or stay and play.
“Go on. Go home. Go and get Mary. Mary. Where’s Mary?”
Which did the trick. Eckless clawed across the grass and disappeared around the house. He would then either huff and clatter in, one solid black excitement, or he would thump himself at the door until someone unlocked it. Until Mary unlocked it. Whichever way he arrived, he would disturb her. He would stop her, he would make her stop.
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