“I’m still here. I’m still here.”
“I know you are.” Lynda knew better than to touch him.
“I’m still here.”
“I know you are, Nathan. Come in and tell me what’s wrong.” She stepped carefully to the side and let him buffet past her into the cottage.
“Christ, he’s bleeding.” Richard loped forward from his chair, throwing his newspaper down with a rattle of pages which seemed, to Nathan, almost unbearably loud.
“I can see he’s bleeding—just give me a hand with him, he’s going to faint.”
And the two of them closed on him from left and right and, as he faltered—baffled by his lack of progress, by the marvellous warmth and brightness of the room—they caught their arms around him. He could not recall ever feeling so secure, or so powerless, so likely to disappear.
They steered him to the sofa while he struggled, fought to focus on Lynda’s face. “Please, it’s Eckless, it’s my fault.”
She nodded, not understanding. “You need to get some rest.”
“Eckless, he’s hurt and I can’t help him. You have to go and get him. You’ll need a knife, a knife and a ladder and a . . . a . . .”
He could feel Lynda muttering over his head, “He must have tried another step.”
“Obviously. But why’s he going on about the dog?”
Nathan focused on the fireplace ahead of him, watched its right angles bow and melt and its fire splay to his feet like brassy water. It didn’t hurt, didn’t even seem warm. Voices bubbled beside his ears.
“He’s not with us.”
“Christ, look at his head.”
“You phone Joe, tell him to have the boat ready—we’ll get him over to a doctor.”
“Nate? Try to keep awake, will you? Can you do that?”
Nathan grabbed at a last coherent breath and made all he could of it. “MY DOG IS HANGING BY HIS FOOT FROM A TREE BEHIND MY FENCE FROM A TREE HE IS DYING DO SOMETHING.”
The fire lapped thickly across the floor and started to climb the walls, paler and paler as it rose, until it closed the room in one hard snap of white.
That he was taken off the island, mumbling and holding his dog, Nathan forgot.
That he was loaded, beside Eckless, into the back of Radio Stevens’s only available vehicle, Nathan forgot.
That the back of the vehicle had been padded with cushions from a three-piece suite but was, nevertheless, the glass-panelled rear of a second-hand hearse, Nathan forgot.
That he cried out and spoke the names of two women, Nathan forgot.
That only the pain in his shoulder let them prise Eckless away from him, Nathan forgot.
That he came to in Accident and Emergency, slapped a nurse and swore himself hoarse before passing out again, Nathan forgot.
He was set in his bed empty-headed: for the first time in his life, entirely ignorant of distressing events in which he had taken part.
He slept relatively well.
Of course, they all came to see him in hospital: Lynda and Richard cooing and smirking as if they’d both given birth to him, instead of just saving his life.
“Well, don’t thank us.” Richard took a swig of Nathan’s Lucozade and grimaced, then comforted himself with a rub at Lynda’s knee. They were turning, Nathan reflected, into an even more hideous couple than before. Having each begun to sag equally and grow scared of a lonely future, they were now—like phlegm and a chest infection—almost entirely inseparable. “I said—”
“I know—don’t thank you. I won’t, then. Tell me about my dog.”
He asked every one of his visitors the same question.
Louis appeared alone with a packet of gipsy creams and a stack of entertaining paperbacks.
“Great.” An ache gnawed in Nathan’s right shoulder every time he took a breath. “Thomas à Kempis, Epicurus and—Louis, you surprise me— Louis Aragon?”
“My namesake. I thought you might like it.”
“So, all of this time, we’ve been calling you Lou-iss and it should have been Lou-ee. Even so—Le Con d ’Irene? Wouldn’t have imagined it was quite your cup of tea—a French dirty book.”
“A French surrealist book. I thought you’d like it. Particularly because it’s dirty.”
“Thank you for thinking so highly of me. What about my dog?”
He asked again when Ruth had finished hovering at his bed’s foot. She looked tearful and underslept.
“I was so worried.”
“There was no need.”
“You don’t look . . .” she eased into the chair beside him, her perfume more overwhelming than usual. He prayed he wouldn’t have to sneeze— the stitches in his head wouldn’t take it.
“I don’t look what? Healthy? Especially clean this morning? Happy enough to see you . . . ?”
She pursed her lips, but her eyes glinted with hurt. “I was going to say that you don’t look as if you’ve done a step.”
Her voice had become unmistakably frail and he became unmistakably guilty, in spite of himself. “You mean I don’t look as though I’m delighted to still be alive. Well, no, I’m not.” He sighed gingerly. “But I didn’t mean to give you a hard time about it—it’s hardly your fault. Sorry.” He noticed she was quick to pat at his one free wrist, damply forgiving. “And will you tell me, or get someone else to tell me what has happened to my dog. I want to know about Eckless. Please.”
For two days, no one would give him any answer. They stared at his pillow or his lamp and then fell silent. Or else they tried to lead his thoughts elsewhere until the conversation broke and they could shuffle and mumble their way through another unwieldy leave-taking. Nathan would watch after them until they were gone and then ease his head forward, shield his hand across his eyes and try to weep. Nothing ever came of it.
“Nathan. Nathan, are you awake?”
Joe was leaning in close over Nathan’s face, he smelled of the island, its particular brand of outdoors, and also of soup.
“I was just passing,” he lowered the startling heat of his palm over Nathan’s fingers, “so I had a nasty snack downstairs and then decided I’d come up to see you.” He inspected Nathan’s head, “Impressive bandage,” then sat down, unsmiling. “Sorry I couldn’t make it before—I was busy.”
“Yeah, I’ve been a bit tied up myself.”
Nathan yawned cautiously, coming to, and examined the ward—four of the other beds were empty, occupants off watching telly in the lounge, no doubt. The two stroke victims lay, as ever, staring silently at the wall above Nathan’s bed, expressions caught in two separate moments of horror, mouths slackened and overly wet. He tried to think of them with sympathy, but still wished they were somewhere different and faced towards somebody else.
“There are some ways you wouldn’t want to end up, eh, Nate?”
Nathan hissed back, restrained by the attentions of his audience, those two pairs of milky eyes, not quite convincingly beyond reach. “Yes, all right—worse things do happen at sea—and I’ll get back the use of my right arm and I can still speak and I don’t piss myself or drool and I’m really not grateful enough for everything I’ve got. I should think myself lucky.”
His vision was hazing in and out of a throb of red, but he continued, “Save your energy, I’ve heard it. I’ve said it to myself so often that I can’t even find it funny any more and it never did fucking help in any case. Just, for Christ’s sake, tell me when Eckless died. Those other cunts wouldn’t say. They didn’t have the fucking decency to tell me. Did they get to him? Did they make him comfortable? Did they—” He realised that he had, absurdly, been about to ask if they’d explained to the dog why his master hadn’t come back to save him. Nathan’s forehead stung and now, when he didn’t want to, he knew he might easily cry.
Joe shook his head faintly and waited for Nathan to settle, to calm, to finally meet his eyes. “Nathan, I said I was busy. That’s what I was busy with.”
“You took care of him?”
Jo
e slowly bent forward and growled into Nathan’s ear so that he shivered while, under his scalp, a weird kind of rasping set in. “Nathan, I know you and I know what you are like, but there must be limits to even your maudlin self-obsession. Don’t roll your eyes, it’ll hurt you. Just listen. Your dog is alive and will, eventually, be quite well. At least, the vet has high hopes. I and the rest of your friends, who—quite inexplicably—care about you, have lied a number of times in a number of places to prevent your committal to a psychiatric ward and your prosecution by the RSPCA.”
“You were just covering your backs.” Even Nathan felt a little sickened when he said this—he probably didn’t entirely mean it and he knew that Joe would let it pass to shame him. He was right.
“No, Nathan, we were covering yours. You went to see her, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You went to see Mau—”
“All right.” He couldn’t hear her name, not now. “All right.”
“You didn’t tell anyone, didn’t ask any advice—you just went off and put yourself in that kind of danger.”
“I wanted to be happy.” A slicing ache pressed between his temples and he began to cry, lost his vision, struggled to even out his breath so that it wouldn’t jar. Joe took hold of his hand again and Nathan hated him for it and hated himself for feeling grateful, for needing the touch.
“Nathan, your dog’s fine and—I would say—is missing you. Mary is coming back at the end of the week and called me because she was worried about you—said you had seemed to be in a very black mood. I haven’t told her anything about this.
“Nathan, she needs you. We need you. I am even assured that you will get better and probably be put out with the unwanted limbs tomorrow, or perhaps the day after that, at which point we will all take you—that’s Lynda and Richard and Ruth and Louis and myself—all of the friends that you don’t want—we will take you back to your home. What more could you ask for?”
Nathan swallowed thickly and found that he was unable to say everything. He tried to glower round at Joe, but only twisted slightly and then produced a retching cough, a sob. He was past the point of self-control now, crying.
“Your dog’s alive, Nathan. You wanted to be happy—now you can.”
Nathan kept on weeping, each new jerk of his breath clawing in his shoulder and the solid glow of Joe’s grip, still fastened around his free hand, nagging away, insistently protective. Nathan only wanted to be left alone.
And also he wanted to never be left alone again. And he wanted to be loved by those he loved and to be set free from them, every one. And he wanted to be able to love those he loved and able to hate them, too. And he wanted to rest at ease in his skin and in his time and place, while he wished to abandon them completely and be gone. And he wanted to die of wanting and he wanted to be properly alive. And he wanted to be thought of fondly and never to be thought of at all.
“Nathan, come on now, that’s enough. You’re still here. Remember? No choice about it.”
Nathan had known that was coming, but the idea of it still locked round him, fastened a soft, cold numbness over his shoulders and down. “I know. No fucking choice.”
“You won’t try again, though, will you, Nathan? You’ve done enough steps. More than enough.”
“I wasn’t doing a step. I was—”
“You won’t do it again.”
“All right, all right. Of course I won’t, it just, it just . . . fucks things up. Eckless is really, he’s—you’re not lying to me? He’s all right?”
“Yes. And you’ll see each other soon. Back on the island. As long as you promise me.”
“Christ, what? I spend my fucking life promising people things. What? Want me to visit you when you’re dead? Hm?”
“I would certainly like you to outlive me. Promise me you won’t try anything again.”
“You know I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“OK. Fuck. I promise. He’s going to be all right?”
Joe nodded and finally smiled. “Yes. Now you should get some rest.”
“Now?”
“Why not now?”
“Because I’m . . .”
“What?” Joe was smiling again and Nathan was hating him for it. “Because you’re what?”
“Because I am happy that Eckless isn’t dead. So I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I would rather be happy for a little while longer, thanks. I would rather feel it for as long as it lasts.”
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
“You can stay if you want to: I won’t be good company.”
“Well, naturally, Nathan, but then I’m used to that.”
Mary was dozing, cheek propped against one fist and her personal stereo sending Glenn Gould’s Salzburg Recital sneaking and loping and leafing through her dream—if it was good enough for Nathan, she’d thought she might try it herself. The fat autumn sun began pouring itself on the sea and burning in the grass outside the Nissen hut, while she peered through a forest in her sleep.
The branches were hung with a felty, brownish foliage, heavy and slightly clammy to the touch—she didn’t like to push through it, but it seemed that she should.
“Ah, Mary.” She’d squeezed out into a clearing, thick with extraordinary fruit: some brittle and fine as coral, others pendulous, swollen in folds of glossy flesh. “You’ve made it this far, then.” In the clearing Joe stood waiting, much taller than usual, his white hair brilliant with light, his eyes an impossible blue and penetrating as ever. “I never really doubted that you would.”
“I—” Behind Joe’s head a massive blade, curved like a scythe, swung in and out of nowhere, lopping off limbs and pods, slicing through rind and pulp, severing curtains of leaves. Blood seeped unmistakably from each cut surface, each raw edge, and misted gently in the air. Mary watched without alarm. “Does this happen often?”
“It’s part of the forest.” Joe smiled far too broadly and winked. “You can’t go back now, though.”
“No. I suppose not.” She felt a hot fall of liquid against her cheek, a sweet, strong smell. “Am I safe?” This seemed an unnecessary question, but she heard herself ask it anyway and was—she supposed—quite interested in the answer.
“Safe? No, of course not. But you know that doesn’t matter—being in danger, being safe. Being here isn’t about that, not at all. You’ve come this far and you’ll go further. This is your place. This is all your place.”
Joe grinned and reached down to grip her by the shoulders, spin her smoothly round to face the way she’d come. The forest wall shimmered and flickered, as if it were painted silk. She watched while the whole, broad tissue of it bellied out towards her, tightening and swelling until she could almost feel it tensed against her.
“All your place.”
The fabric paused and then broke into powder, into dust. “Mine?” The powder shone like a turn in a school of fish and then vanished, left her staring at a plain of sand, at meat-coloured rocks and the writhing of baked air.
“All yours. And no going back.”
“Will I like it?”
“No. You’ll love it. Cross the desert and you’ll be in the forest again.”
“And then I’ll be home.”
“You will find your way home.” A cloud of small, iridescent birds fountained up out of a hollow and spattered the heat with looping melodies.
“But will I get home?”
“You will find your way home. You will make your way home. Your way has always been your home.” The birds were slowly forming themselves into a column above him, their music growing more elegant, more mathematically complex. “We don’t ever arrive. We only find our way.”
Joe was elongating, stretching up into the open heart of the column until he began to be obscured by the rushing birds. “You do understand that you’re dreaming?” he called down to her, still jovial.
“I think so.”
“But dreams are a serious matter, of course.”
“Of course.”
> Joe’s feet had left the sand and he was gradually ascending, disappearing in the drum of wings. Mary shielded her eyes from the sun to watch him rise and couldn’t stop herself from shouting, “And what about Nathan?”
“In a bad way.” His voice was shimmering and broken with silences.
“What?” She couldn’t see him any longer, not even the soles of his shoes.
“Needs care. A lot of care.”
The birds let their music lace and mesh above her while they spun into a blur of oiled steel blue, which—in its turn—rubbed darker and darker until it was the dull red glow of her own closed eyelids, shut over her waking eyes.
She stirred, rubbed her cheek, her head still full of lunging and tickling notes—Gould working through the Goldberg Variations, sighing and tapping his feet. It was good, but she thought that she might not listen to it again.
Nathan was lying next to Eckless. Since they’d both come back from the mainland this was the way they preferred to be, matching each other, breath for breath, the dog’s head tucked in close to Nathan’s chin and Nathan’s left arm around the dog. Joe had lent them his sofa for the purpose, carried it from the Lighthouse to Nathan’s cottage. Even with Richard and Ruth helping, it had taken the better part of an afternoon.
“Nathan?” There was always a certain wariness about them, a sense of their keeping alert. Mary couldn’t tell if both of them were sleeping, or if each was only pretending to rest in order to calm the other and still keep a proper watch. There was something defensive about their closeness, something fierce. “Nathan?” She didn’t exactly like to disturb them, but equally, watching them lying seemed a much greater intrusion and always left her staring, trying not to think about their pain. “Na—”
“Sssh. I think he really is asleep this time.” Nathan was whispering, his eyes still shut. Eckless gave a wakeful little sigh of contradiction. “Or maybe not. Still, he should be tired. We walked twice round the cottage this afternoon.” He rubbed very softly at the dog’s back, “The boy done good,” and then yawned. “Put the light on, could you—might as well.”
Everything You Need Page 56