Naturally, in the end, it’s up to you.
But, talking of free will—that third promise, I am going to hold you to it. I’ve sealed up the relevant details inside the other envelope—I hope you didn’t open that one first. It would be just like you to fuck up the proper sequence of events. Anyway, please think of it as a final little gift. And something that you can do for me, something no one else could. Frankly, I wouldn’t want anyone else to try. Only you.
All of the needful arrangements have been made.
Please, Nathan. I would like you to do it. For me.
And I do detest maudlin goodbyes, so this is it.
You were the near friend of my heart. But you know that, don’t you?
Yours,
Jack Dowd Grace, Literary Editor
Nathan wasn’t feeling the cold. That morning, he’d taken the launch across to Ancw and bought six half-bottles of whisky—the comfortable, inside-pocket-filling size. Now he sat on the cliff grass and stared at the Seven Brothers and the rising swing of water in his bay, his back to the wind, his cap on his head and his gloved hands resting snug around one of the bottles which was, by this point, almost drained.
To the west, a blue bank of cloud was thickening and he could smell a coming rain, a shower that would catch him, long before he made it home. He didn’t mind. Back at the cottage, Eckless was probably still fretting, upset at not being in company, unsettled by the hard mood of the day, and Nathan didn’t mind that either, especially. A splinter of irritation with himself, of guilt, would prick him dumbly, now and then, but it didn’t matter, not a bit.
For the most part, his skull was simply filled with music, with Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations creeping and then bursting in mercury scatters, the mumble and fuss of the pianist occasionally nudging through. Ever since he’d got the letter, Mary’s present had been earning its keep. He should have bought more batteries in Ancw. Stupid. Too late to go over again today. Too late and too drunk.
The final, oyster light was easing from the horizon and the rain had begun when he felt hands rest on his shoulders, the press of someone against his side. He didn’t look, but knew it would be Mary.
She sat to his left, their bodies touching at the hip, and joined him in considering the sea.
By the time the last variation had played out, the sky was almost completely dark. Nathan swallowed, coughed, put away his little earphones in the pocket of his coat. He noticed he was shivering. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s OK.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Fine.”
And he turned towards her dumbly, caught her in hard until his face was at her neck, the live heat of her neck. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t.
1996
Other people’s quarrels, they never sound as sensible as your own. Not that I quarrel a lot. Not that we quarrel a lot.
Mary tried to think of how often she’d fallen out with Jonathan since they’d met.
Since we ever saw each other—since we were both at school, for heaven’s sake—I think we’ve only really fought once, or maybe twice—five times at the most. Which either means that we’re suited, or that we keep things bottled up. Probably that we’re suited. And now . . .
She glanced off to the corner of the room, wanting to give herself a touch of privacy.
And now we’ve been fine since he came to Ancw—that’s most of November, December and seven days of January. Nearly two months. All fine. Very fine.
The part of his lips, that neat, opening sound, brushed through her.
Across the table from her, Louis was waving his left hand, pinkly, while his other pressed a daintily curled finger to his lips and he tried to swallow a mouthful of chocolate mousse more rapidly than he’d intended. Richard smiled at him benignly and then smiled with equal warmth at Lynda, who was currently preoccupied with a screeching argument. That is to say, she was screeching as her contribution to the afternoon’s argument.
“Bloody hell, this is so fucking childish.”
Mary sometimes couldn’t work out why the Fellowship even tried to hold Business Meetings: proper, business-related business meetings. Joe had taken to holding them downstairs, away from the meditation room in what he hoped would be a more informal, round-the-dining-table atmosphere. But, half the time, they still ended in something not terribly far from a brawl. And the first meeting of the New Year was already mutating into something predictably venomous.
Lynda continued, rising half a tone. “Just open the sodding thing. Or are you scared you’ll spoil your game. Christ, you’re like a mound of little boys.”
Mary, who never could take these performances seriously, failed to resist the temptation to join in. “Is mound the correct collective noun for little boys?”
Finally freed from his pudding, Louis pushed back his chair and brought both his hands down against his knees with a vicious-sounding slap. He twitched at the impact, but still managed a respectable frown round the table, laden with a schoolboy’s naked dismay and a schoolmaster’s distaste. Having established a painful silence, he began, “With the greatest respect to everyone, I do still have to say that we have this discussion about the jar really far too often. Joe and I have been around long enough to remember a number of jars and I would suggest that you take our words on what happens to them. Either we do this thing properly, or we don’t bother doing it at all. The agreement is that we seal up the jar with the Fellowship’s statements, predictions, promises, whatever, and then we keep it that way until seven years have absolutely, fully elapsed and, I’m afraid, they quite simply haven’t done that yet. Mary’s contribution was added at the end of 1990 when she,” he nodded to her, almost undermining his serious tone with a grin, “when she decided to delight us with her company. The official sealing date was the first of November 1989. This is simply the New Year—we cannot open the jar until the first of November 1996, the Day of the Dead 1996. As usual. I do hope that satisfies everyone.” His lips pursed disappointedly. “And I cannot imagine why this has all had to be so acrimonious. Very unnecessary. Pueri inter sese quam pro levibus noxiis iras gerunt, as I believe Terence once wrote.”
He gave Mary another, more expectant nod and she tried her best to translate for him, as she usually did. It was a matter of honour—hers and the Uncles’. And, in any case, the hardest thing in the world to resist was, as ever, an utterly innocent request.
Or an utterly loving one. Same difference.
“Ahm ... Boys easily ... How lightly boys squabble amongst themselves?”
Louis beamed. “Squabble—I like that. Better than disagree. Good.”
Lynda rolled her eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I just said much the same thing myself and never mind fucking Terence. Jesus.”
“Never mind fucking Terence? That’s not like you. Even if he is dead. What’s the matter—something spoil your appetite?” Nathan had been quiet until then, morosely reducing a piece of bread to flattened pills. These he now swept on to the floor, before standing and stalking out of the dining room. He hadn’t been in the best of tempers for a while.
“One day, he’ll get the kicking he deserves.” Lynda had quietened, dragged her vowels back to something more convincingly middle class. “Bloody drama queen. He just has to be the only one who’s ever had a problem. And all of his precious suffering is supposed to mean he can act like a total shit.”
“He’s not so bad.” Ruth flushed mildly. “Well, he’s not.”
Lynda was having none of it. “And well, we all know what you’re after, don’t we, dear?”
Here we go. Here we bloody go. Mary tried to catch Joe’s eye. He had leaned himself back in his chair with his arms firmly folded and was studying the ceiling, apparently beyond all reach of communications. But, as she looked, he bowed gently forward and met her eye. Until he blinked, it seemed she could feel his attention in her mind, like the touch of a cool, clean hand. She shivered.
&
nbsp; “Ladies and gentlemen,” Joe didn’t shout, barely raised his voice, “it’s a cold day,” but, as he continued, he eased a wary calm around the table. “Before dinner I lit a good fire upstairs in the Meeting Room.” Lynda and Richard found each other’s hands and held on, watching him. “And I’m sure that, in a moment, we’ll go and be more comfortable together there. Once we’ve re-established our dignity.”
He inhaled and, Mary could have sworn, the room seemed to shimmer very slightly and then recoil when he sighed. This was only her imagination, she understood, a trick of her emotions, playing out over the facts.
“But first, gentlemen and ladies, I would like to mention a matter which may recently have proved disturbing for a few of us. On our island we try to keep apart from the world’s news, but it comes to us, nevertheless. And I think that we are all now aware that on the twenty-third of December the bodies of sixteen members of the Solar Temple sect were found in a clearing near Grenoble. It is supposed that fourteen of those people were murdered by two of their fellows who, in turn, killed themselves.”
Joe gently reached across and scooped up Mary’s fist, the customary heat in his surrounding fingers making her realise how chilled she’d become. He tilted his head briefly to one side, considering her, and then— satisfied by whatever he’d seen—continued.
His voice was careful, smooth, low. “Naturally, we are, ourselves, a kind of sect. When I was moved to begin our Fellowship, my intention was to make a place where writers could stay for as long as they wished in order to find, or to rediscover, their calling. Although I tend to speak about them very little, our foundations are formed in part from a kind of spiritual discipline. We come here to uncover the privileges and the rights which permit our lives to speak. Naturally, we must, therefore, seek to understand our lives and this means that we must also consider our deaths. But we work towards creation, not destruction. We look for truth, not death.”
“We look for truth, not death.” Nathan, leaning on the doorway, back with them all again. “We look for truth, not death,” and reciting, as if he were remembering a prayer: “In writing, as in love, we die to ourselves and yet still live. We become immortality and less than nothingness. We make ourselves fit to hear truths. We make ourselves fit to tell them. Our hearts speak.”
And, when he seemed unwilling, or unable, to continue, Joe stepped in to take up the refrain. “We are words in the mind of God and we are free.”
So do we say Amen now, or what?
Mary glanced gingerly around, a prickle of something unidentifiable rising in her neck.
But no one seemed especially surprised by the outburst. Louis, Ruth, Lynda, Richard: they all simply looked moderately content. Joe still held her hand, but was keeping his eye on Nathan, who—after a small yawn and a casual scratch at one arm—began to stroll towards the table. He winked broadly at Mary. “That’s us told, then.”
Everyone took this as their cue to rearrange hands, clear throats, scuffle back chairs and prepare to move elsewhere. Joe stayed where he was, still gripping Mary. “Glad you could join us again, Nathan.”
“I know you have a soft spot for sevens, Joe. Didn’t want to let you down.”
This brought a punch of laughter from Joe, who unhanded Mary and stood. “Ready to come upstairs?”
Nathan braced both arms on the back of an emptied chair and stretched his back, experimentally. “We’ll be there. We’ll be there.”
He didn’t kneel in close and look up at Mary until everyone else had gone.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. Everything he said felt,” she fumbled for a suitable word and then compromised, “felt good, I suppose. But I’m not convinced I know what it meant.”
“What it meant? Nothing complicated—only that we’re all of us after our own little piece of Grail. Which is hardly unusual—most people believe they have one thing they still need, one they have to get. It’s what moves them.” He broke into a grin and attempted a grim kind of chuckle. “Never mind all of that, anyway. You know what you have to remember. Hm?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Too fucking right.” He loomed in at her and whispered. “Rule Six, then. Ready?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“ There are no rules.” Smiling flatly, he paused for her response. “There are no fucking rules. Not a single one.”
She tried to keep it light. “Now he tells me.”
“Now is when you’re ready to know.” The skin at the corner of one of his eyes twitched very slightly and she thought he seemed weary. “Look,” Nathan scratched at his stubble absently. He’d taken to shaving only every week or so and his face, that afternoon, was whitened with a haze of bristles. Mary didn’t like to see him this way—as if he were giving in to getting old. “I may not agree with everything Joe says. In fact, I may not agree with anything Joe says, but he’s—” he stood again and prodded the table top with one forefinger, “he is a man of faith. And he does his very best to make his faith contagious. Because he knows that no one can write without it. The author of the story must be the first to believe in what it says.” He suddenly seemed to notice the disarray left behind after the Lunch, “Fuck,” and started slamming dirty bowls together into a stack, “shower of clatty wasters.”
Mary felt she ought to join him, following on behind and gathering up a handful of used spoons, two side plates and a serving dish. “It’s not our turn to do this.”
“Doesn’t matter. Like I said—there are no rules.”
“No rules—more work.”
“Correct. Absolutely.” He preceded her into the kitchen, where they each clattered down their respective loads. “Of course, Joe would say that no one can live without faith. But he’d be wrong.” Nathan snapped a look to her, apparently expecting contradiction. “I live without it all the time.”
Christ, Nathan—what the hell do you want me to tell you? That you’re wrong? That you’re right? Nothing’s going to please you, even if I want it to.
So she didn’t say anything to him beyond, “Come on, they’ll be waiting for us upstairs.” She was surprised when he let her take his arm and then she felt him lean in against her lightly as they started to walk. She couldn’t help noticing that he smelt much more than usual of dog and also of stale linen and unconcern.
In the Meeting Room Joe’s promised fire was well established, pale salt flames rising randomly from driftwood. The rest of the group was waiting, everyone suitably chastened and arranged to either side of Joe, who sat, somehow energetically at peace, his fingers laced and tranquil across his stomach, but his eyes at their most frightening, active blue.
Two empty chairs had been left beside each other in the customary ring of seats and Mary edged in to settle herself ahead of Nathan. Her eyes were already closed when she heard him join her, the sigh of cloth as he folded his arms and the odd, small intake of air, as if dipping into silence was much the same as dipping into water, as if the shock of it had made him catch his breath.
If I tell him I’m having trouble with my novel—maybe not trouble, not as big a thing as that, but a difficult patch, maybe, something like that . . . If I tell him, then he’s the one who’s meant to help me. I can’t ask now, though. Not when he’s the way he is.
God, half the time I spend on the bloody island, I’m worrying about Nathan. He’s too much by himself. Even when he’s with people. And he never really says, never says what’s wrong.
And “ There are no rules.” Well, what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?
That he’s in another funny mood.
She sighed before she could stop herself, disturbing the peace.
God, I give up. He’s old enough to take care of himself. I’m just not sure if he knows that . . .
All right, though, enough now. Enough.
Every month she tried this, she hoped she would be better at it and still found that her thinking unravelled into pretty much th
e same unedifying mess. First her worries would rise to the surface and then would come a passage of calm, followed by a spasm of sexual recollection, another, more forced, hiatus and then a dwindling into haphazard fragments of imagination and incoherent memories. On a couple of afternoons, she’d found herself surprised by a bolt of irresistible sadness, or joy, but, more often, she had ended the session feeling that she would have got more benefit from slipping off and taking a walk, or perhaps a nap.
These thoughts idled by while the fire subsided gently into clinking embers, and a breeze nudged the window panes. Her concentration skipped to a little blank, almost dozing, and then she noticed that her breath was coming rather faster than usual, as if she were a little nervous, just slightly alarmed. At the same time, she realised the rise and turn of breathing round the room was matching, or even governing her own. Initially, the thought of this was mildly suffocating and she tried to break step, to stall her small regular hunger for air.
She tugged her concentration in and set herself to form and measure her own beat. Her throat seemed to smooth, to open and, in her solar plexus, she started to feel the wordless murmur and shine of something like anticipated sex—almost that ache, that tug, that anxious friction in the blood.
And then the ache broke like a split meniscus, flowed, and she felt, for a blink of her heart, a kind of towering possibility. She recognised it, this terrible expansion of reality. The same monstrous buzz and slap and suck and fluster had surrounded her that night in the wood and had made her really want to go and begin writing. That had been the first time that she realised she genuinely could.
And this was the second.
When Joe patted his hands together to mark the end of the hour, Mary’s imagination staggered back to her. When she opened her eyes, even the muted colours in the Meeting Room leaped and blared. She was enormously tired and muzzy, but also exhilarated. When she stood, the floor tipped at her gently and she swayed back to bump at Nathan.
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