For several days the island swam and fluttered with relief. Joe and Nathan had gone with Sophie all the convoluted way to the nearest hospital (not near) and hovered and mumbled nonsense to each other while she was tested for signs of damage (none present). Then they took charge of their miracle and they brought her back home.
“Is she sleeping?”
“Yes.” Joe, in stocking feet, edging his study door shut behind him. “I keep on expecting her still to be cold. Not that it isn’t chilly up there . . . we should think of central heating, I suppose.”
Nathan set down his emptied whisky glass. “Whoever heard of central heating in a lighthouse?”
“Well, exactly.” Joe sank into his armchair and stretched, his voice drowsy with contentment, with the good satisfactions of care. “But meanwhile I’ve layered the poor child under so many quilts and blankets, it’s a wonder she can even turn.”
Nathan spoke gently, looking into the fire. “Still, everything about her is a wonder, isn’t it?”
They considered the absolute truth of this statement while the whole house rested, surrounded by the stillness of fallen snow, the moon-reflecting nature of geometric ice lapping light, up behind the curtains, bright as day.
Nathan felt the heat from the fireplace prickling his cheeks, but still kept leaning forward, anxious for more. Ever since the day at the lochan, he’d been craving warmth. And soft things, too, almost childish comforts: his gentlest shirts, rice pudding and toffees and custard and books he hadn’t owned in years containing stories of great adventures, each one ending happily.
He guessed Joe might be feeling much the same.
“Shall I put another log on your fire, Joe?”
“Wouldn’t mind if you did, Nate. More whisky?”
“I’ll not say no.”
They pottered comfortably about the room, performing their little tasks without a sound, and then settled again, beginning to slide towards sleep. Joe squinted at the fireglow through his upheld glass. “It’s so good.”
“What, the whisky?”
“The everything.”
“Mm.”
“Nathan?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you read to her. I know you wanted to.”
“But you wanted to more.”
“You can do it tomorrow.”
“If you like.”
Nathan contemplated turning in soon, tried curling his mind in the improvised bed he’d been made here on the couch, with the fire easing down in the dark and nothing but peace and books around him—like all of those other times when he was younger, just after the divorce, when he’d slept in all of those other friends’ studies, had borrowed the normalities of their households, their children, their ornaments, the presence of their wives, had let them help him to hide away all of his wants, responsibilities, recollections. He let a smile overtake him. “It is good, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“The everything.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And having a daughter.”
“That’s good.”
“That is so very good.”
Nathan tried, in the cab, to think of Other Things.
All right, then, all right—something engaging, something distracting, something . . .
Stepping up on to the quay—yes, that’ll do—stepping up on to the quay at Ancw and seeing Mary with Jonathan, walking: the two of them there.
His mind dashed ahead, unwary, simply anxious for a safe release.
And they weren’t holding hands, linking arms, they weren’t actually, physically touching in any way, but you still would have known absolutely that they were together, a couple, a pair—I think, because of their pace, the way they moved in time with each other without any effort, quite naturally. And their expressions—they’re beginning to slip into nice resemblances. She has her smiles and he has his and now they have the way they smile when each is echoing the other—something new.
Which is a good thing to consider, nothing threatening or unusual in that.
He knew he was sweating: an almost shivery, anticipatory kind of damp creeping over him. Not a good sign.
Something else, then, something else.
The last thing he wanted this morning was to end up alone with himself.
Or alone with what I’m doing. Or, more accurately, with what I’m being forced to do.
He searched his thinking for a further firm handhold, a suitably involving grip.
Jonno wasn’t meant to stay this long—Mary said he would be in Ancw until the summer. And this is the autumn and he’s still here. Another six months on the contract—so they can fuck some more.
Found it. A good, raw point of contact.
Not fuck her—sleep with her. They sleep together. As well as the other stuff.
No matter how much of an everyday truth this was, the idea of it still sliced and winked uncomfortably, somewhere on the underside of his brain.
Not that they shouldn’t. Do the other stuff.
Nevertheless, there were many far worse things he might consider— like the way he was going to spend this next half-hour.
Christ, they ought to be doing that. If they’re both normal, healthy and young and normal. Which they are. Which she is. Which I’m sure they both are.
It’s all fine.
Nobody could have any objections.
Nobody normal, or open-minded. Or healthy, or young. Nobody who was, in these and other ways, quite completely fucking different from me.
He was inhaling gently, slowly, and thus avoiding any dizzying overuse of breath—an unmistakable sign of nervousness. But this attempt at discipline and common sense was making him, in itself, feel harried and panicked and short of air. He noticed the taxi was rancidly overheated: he should pull the window down.
Maybe Jonno’s only getting what he wants from her and then, when he’s bored again and horny, he’ll just move on. Men are shits, really. Complete pigs. We can justify every brand of bad behaviour.
Then again, so can bloody women.
And, in any case, I would say, would guess—
His stomach, already anxious, gave an unpleasant, intimate skip. He drummed on with his train of thought in any case.
I would guess that Mary probably also is pretty generally in favour of what they’re doing. Of the sex.
Ach, bollocks—she’s bound to like it. She’s bound to be a good, sensual woman, because that runs in the family and there’s no harm in it—or only the usual.
Another skip.
And she looks well on it: easier about herself: a pound or two of tension just completely lifted out of her: gone. It’ll do that, getting what you want. It’ll make you feel better.
He tried to steer himself away from themes that might turn morbid, while his window darkened momentarily as the taxi passed under the shadow of a gate. The road narrowed and began to wind between high and disturbingly purposeful late Victorian blocks.
Fuck. Almost there.
And I was almost beginning to wonder why I’d been putting this off.
Come on, some other picture, any other picture, any other thought.
Mary and Jonathan on the quayside, having their stroll and asking me where I was going, what I’d be up to in London, was it the usual kind of trip— business? And then Mary, because she is a lovely person, snibbed her hand into mine, nudged my elbow, and let me feel that she’d remembered that my business isn’t usual any more, because I am conducting it alone. And I nudged her back and told her, told them both—
He clutched his hands together for the want of more meaningful touch and found the clasp of his skin against his skin seemed terribly wooden and chill.
I told them I was going to do a favour for a friend. Which was an evasion, but not a lie. I have come here to do a favour for a friend.
And he kept that last sentence turning through his mind while he left the cab, went into the building, gave in his name at reception and waited and waited
some more behind what he dearly, dearly hoped was a feasible grin.
Although grinning in here might be thought inappropriate.
Something ticked in his left eyebrow and he sternly reminded himself that there could be no chance, this afternoon, of his losing the slightest fragment of control over anything, especially his face.
“Ah, Mr. Staples, how very good to meet you.” A tidily muscular man with downy grey hair had hurried up, apparently out of nowhere, and now stood far too close to Nathan. “Delighted to think we might be able to aid your research.” He extended his hand, “Although I have to say that your work is already really very accurate,” the opened gesture, perfectly placed, inviting a response. Nathan found he could do no more than stare at it.
The man tried again, energetically patient. “I’m Professor Cairn.”
“Ah,” Nathan managed, and then, “thanks,” while brushing his hand dry on his sleeve, “Yes. Good,” before his palm was snatched up into a very thorough shake. “Oh, thanks. Good to meet you. And to . . . to . . . to be here.”
“Splendid. I always enjoy it when we have, shall we say, outsiders visiting—not than anyone is genuinely an outsider, in a way.” He paused long enough for Nathan to nod a queasily baffled agreement and then went on, “The artist’s perspective—that’s something we often lack.” The professor began to pad along an innocent-looking corridor, academic bookshelves here and there: nothing remotely alarming to catch the eye. “Although, usually, we have visual artists, of course.” He went at a fair pace, the professor, had an unmistakable air of intelligent, physical strength—the type of man who might take vitamins and prefer his sports to be slightly dangerous.
Nathan’s throat coughed out, “Visual. Of course,” as he was trotted in through a set of double doors, restraining, all the while, the tremendous thought of what he might have to see beyond them.
But there was only more corridor lying in wait, lined with what seemed to be elderly deep-freezes. The professor stopped abruptly beside one.
Surely not. Not opening the lid. Not reaching in and plucking out.
Cairn tutted at himself, suddenly turning faintly coquettish. “Now here I am, hurrying you along, and I’ve quite forgotten—this is for you.”
Nathan flinched mildly as what he had taken to be a vaguely ominous towel, tucked in the crook of Cairn’s arm, was now thrust in his direction. He gripped it and watched the cloth unfurl between his hands into a lab coat of startling white. The one the professor sported was a much more placid magnolia.
Worn in, I suppose.
Nathan duly donned the pristine garment, glancing about in an effort to resist the placid fascination of Cairn’s breast pocket. Nathan had only just noticed its neatly arrayed load of narrow, clever instruments and the reddish-brown stains rubbed in above them.
Greasy with use.
The air was starting to smell aggressively dry and, somehow, bitter.
“In a way, you know, you couldn’t have timed this more perfectly.” The professor tucked one meaty hand into the other behind his back.
No, actually, I couldn’t have timed this any worse. But it wasn’t my choice. If it had been my choice, I would have come here at any other fucking time. Believe me, there would be days when I would love this, pay to gain entry, break down your door. But now is not the hour and these are not the circumstances and I hope you will never know this, I hope I will make it through your tour without giving myself away—without giving my friend away.
Nathan managed a whine of quizzical interest, his stomach pitching, his feet jogging him on to fuck knew what, brain churning away maliciously, predicting his imminent future with jittery glee.
Cairn strode ever forward. “They’re trying to cut us back, you see, and only use computers. If they have their way, very little of this will be here soon. Which would, of course, be quite ridiculous. The presence, the reality, the quiddity—that always teaches so much more. It could be argued that it coarsens experience, it could, it could. But I would, quite probably, not agree. And our students are going to be doctors, for heaven’s sake. They do have to be used to this. They also have to understand that their patients may, despite their best efforts—”
Nathan listened with a tiny proportion of his attention and nodded approximately when he should, as Professor Cairn slipped him carefully into the world of the fabric and the structure of their own selves, their own making. Nathan grew used to the headachy tang of acetone and the sharper edge of formalin and phenol and became, in spite of all misgivings, entranced.
What he knew to be his nature—his conscienceless, basic, inquisitive nature—asserted its appetites and hungrily investigated his species’ construction. When he was offered things to look at, he looked. When he was presented with the complicated beauty of matter built for motion, for holding life, he couldn’t help but love it, couldn’t avoid succumbing also to a giddy admiration of his personal, individual, private form.
“Here, we’ve impregnated this with resin.” Cairn proffered a mildly glistening knot of flesh, rounded and crimson, neat in his palm. “What would otherwise be a wet specimen is far more manageable like this.”
Nathan accepted the little weight of a whole human heart, preserved, and resisted the lunatic urge to stroke it, to keep hold of it, take it away. Anything would serve him better than the uneasy organ currently fidgeting in his chest. “Very nice.”
“Isn’t it?” The professor plucked it back, delicately, almost affectionately proud.
“Ah, I was wondering, in fact . . .”
I wasn’t wondering, I do not, fucking do not, want to know.
“I was wondering how long you could keep them for.”
“Organs like that?”
“No. No, the, the people.”
“The bodies we are permitted by law to keep for three years. It would be possible to keep them for much longer. But after three years we return them to their people, send them home.”
“Three years.”
“They’re preserved quite differently, of course.”
“Oh, of course. Three years . . . That’s longer than I’d thought.”
A long time to be here, without the proper company.
The afternoon continued, Nathan now darting from room to room, examining bottles and pictures and slides until a pleasant intoxication settled in. He was beginning to feel delighted, or at least more than satisfied, with the facts of his life, his livingness. When he noticed the turn of his wrist beneath its scar, the articulation of his fingers, his ability to observe them, to hear the shift of skin against his cuff, this all seemed both remarkable and lovely. He all seemed both remarkable and lovely.
Jesus fuck, I really have sunk to this—a building filled with bits of dead people is what it takes to make me feel OK.
And even if I do feel OK, I still shouldn’t be here. I have still lied to the good professor in order to get myself inside. I still have the worst to come.
He handed back an inch-thick section—suitably preserved—taken through the skull of an adult male: here a fraction of bone, here a little of the jaw, here a portion of the tongue and here a close-trimmed hazing of soft hair, still rooted in the skin that once covered the nape of a neck. Nathan felt the gentle bristles tickling the ball of his thumb.
Shit. No, that’s too close to life. Too close to having her touch you there, to her cupping the heat of your neck, your living neck.
He watched the section as Cairn carefully returned it to its drawer.
I hope you knew all about touching. I hope you got plenty—far more than your fair share. I hope you lived like fuck. Although that’s the kind of living that can kill you, the kind that could lose you a friend. Even so, I hope you had good times.
Night, night.
And then, once again, they were moving, Cairn leading Nathan deeper inside the building. He was used now to the rhythm of disclosures, the leap and shine of body secrets—secrets his particular substance must also conceal. He was also accustomed
to the absence of any shock.
So I should be all right for what’s coming, shouldn’t I? Acclimatised? Prepared?
He never liked it when he asked himself questions and had no replies.
The pair paused in a tight, square hallway they had crossed before. Just out of sight to the left, Nathan knew, a fresh body was curled on the table in the steely embalming room, its back to the door in a posture of easy sleep.
They must all look that way—everything about them, from a distance, seeming almost natural. Every body they bring here will have lain in that room, resting, being slowly taken by its next change.
To the right was a nest of laboratories, all bracketed and busied round each other. And then there was another door directly ahead, the one they hadn’t yet passed through. Nathan was already close enough to hear, coming from it, the sound of comfortable chatter in a high, broad space.
The professor grinned, fatherly. “I’m so glad you could come when the term time’s started—with the students here and working—they make such a difference. Our ladies and gentlemen.” He softly ushered Nathan in.
An anteroom first, lined with empty metal tables, each with a metal bucket hooked at its foot. Nathan had already fixed his eyes on the back of Cairn’s head. He already felt he knew too clearly what would be inside it: flush to the bone; but, even so, that particular mental image was something quite solid and calm to counteract the blasphemous slapstick that was capering in his own brain, his imagination lurching forward with threats he couldn’t contemplate.
Jack, you fuck. You can’t really have meant this. Not this. You can’t really have wanted this. For me to see this. I can’t stop you being lonely here.
Jesus, Jack, I miss you—not whatever kind of fucking experience you’ve turned into.
You always were a sick, fucking bastard. And I’d say that to your face.
But I don’t want to. Not here. Not now. You shouldn’t make me.
But already the main room, without his consent, had rushed up around him and he was taking the first breath in of nothing too ugly, or—by now—strange, only a firmly chemical scent, a heady demonstration of the force required to halt decay. On all sides there were tables, figures in lab coats grouped together round them, leaning, working in. There was too much information here to understand and too many variables fluctuating to allow him to make a plan. Nathan simply wasn’t sure if he could do what Jack had asked him to—or even if he’d manage to try.
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