by Heather Burt
Rudy kicked a stone off the path. He expected Kanda would have something to say to Uncle Ernie about the meaninglessness of language and whatnot.
“Let’s take a rest up ahead, Uncle,” he said.
The path had widened, and they’d reached a broad stairway bisected by a row of lampposts, the lamps unlit. The clouded sky was so close, so low, it seemed they would climb straight into it. Heavy raindrops dotted Rudy’s khaki trousers and streamed down the sleeves of his jacket. A menacing ache gripped his right buttock and hip. As he took hold of a post and hauled himself forward, he thought of Adam, hovering in some transitional world not unlike this one. Yet close somehow, capable of spurring him on.
At the top of the stairway the ground flattened to a red earth terrace housing an enormous, bulbous stupa, its white surface barely distinguishable from the clouds behind it. Around its base, a few feet from the ground, were alcoves, each one sheltering a seated Buddha—a dozen of them at least. The top of the structure slimmed to a gold pin that pierced the sky. Rudy stared briefly at the lonely stupa then took off his pack and went to lean between two of the alcoves. An overhang sheltered him from the rain; his uncle remained out on the packed earth terrace, getting wet.
Rummaging for his water bottle, he recalled Aunty Mary’s attempts to talk him out of the climb. The subjects of her warnings, issued over the phone, had been impressive: snakes, bandits, wild animals. Even worse, she’d seemed to think, was the solitude, the idea that they’d be completely alone on their pilgrimage. Rudy, for his part, had imagined with a wave of horror the kind of target that Adam’s Peak would offer at the height of the pilgrimage season, but he’d stifled the thought immediately and listened dutifully to his aunt. “You must wait until the next season,” she’d said, and when he insisted that that was out of the question, she pleaded with him to take a guide. “Ernie is an old man,” she’d said. “He doesn’t know the peak as well as he says he does.”
Rudy had dismissed her suggestions, even laughed at her fears, but now he wasn’t so sure. Adam’s Peak, out of season, was indeed an inhospitable place, and the cold sea of mist most certainly held dangers of one kind or another. Impatient to be done with the whole thing, he called across the terrace.
“How much longer would you say, Uncle?”
Uncle Ernie, gazing about in a manner that suggested Aunty’s judgments of him were quite correct, crossed the terrace to the shelter of the stupa. His silver hair was plastered to his forehead. He wiped it to one side then checked his watch.
“We’ve been at it approximately one hour. I estimate we’ll be getting up top in another two.” He kicked a stone at a scrawny dog that had appeared from nowhere, sniffing hungrily. “Poor bugger,” he said. “Probably hasn’t had a decent meal since the season ended. He’d get fat then, I’m telling you.” Again he surveyed the surroundings. “You should see it, Rudy. January, February, this path is chock-a-block with pilgrims. You’re held back by the mob. Not like today. The only thing slowing us down now is our own aches and pains.” He looked up. “Perhaps this weather, if it persists.”
Listening to the slap of the rain against the earthen terrace, the rustle of it through the trees, Rudy made rough calculations in his head. At the rate they were going, there was little chance they’d make it back down before dark. They didn’t have a flashlight; they needed to turn around. But he couldn’t make himself do it—could only lean back and contemplate the situation abstractly, as if there were nothing to be done. As if he were back on President Street, held there by forces beyond his control. He took a gulp of water and offered the bottle to his uncle.
“We could do with something stronger,” Uncle Ernie muttered, but he took a long swig nonetheless. “You do these sorts of excursions often in Canada?” he then said, handing the bottle back. “Braving the elements, like the explorers?”
“Hardly,” Rudy laughed. “I work out in a swanky gym with TVs and a coffee bar. The only emergency supply I’ve got is a Visa card.”
Uncle Ernie nodded seriously. “Hmm, I’m afraid my knowledge of Canada is outdated. But in that case, why didn’t you wait for the new season? Much less trouble climbing then, no?”
Rudy thought of reminding his uncle that it was he, Ernie, who’d suggested climbing Adam’s Peak out of season, but he held back. The handwritten note he’d received, inviting him to travel to Hatton for an excursion to the peak, had been an immeasurable relief. He’d accepted without hesitation, in part because the brevity and awkwardness of his last visit with Uncle Ernie had tormented him. But also, of course, because of Adam.
On the train ride to Hatton, it was his obligation to Adam that kept him sane. Just minutes out of Fort Station, a stranger had approached Rudy’s seat, carrying a bulky radio. The man slid the radio onto the crowded overhead rack, then he disappeared. As the train rumbled out of the city, Rudy’s gaze travelled compulsively upward, and the junky old machine acquired a terrifying power. More than once he was sure he heard the sound of ticking, and he stumbled to the open doorway each time to gasp for air. He searched without success for another seat. When the conductor passed by, he pointed out the abandoned radio and pleaded for its removal, but the man merely shrugged and carried on. So he closed his eyes, massaged his sweating forehead, and concentrated on Adam. He was making this pilgrimage for his brother. If he was risking his life, it was for Adam—though at the conclusion of the journey, the stranger came back and reclaimed the radio, acknowledging Rudy with a cordial nod.
He took a mouthful of water and considered explaining to his uncle why he couldn’t possibly wait until the new season to climb Adam’s Peak. But the thought dissolved, unuttered.
“I’m not sure I’ll be here next season,” he said instead.
His answer echoed vexingly in his head. It was just something to say, but in saying it he recognized that it was in him—the possibility of leaving.
“You’ll go back to Canada?” Uncle Ernie said.
Chilled from having stood around too long, Rudy put the water bottle back in his bag and stepped away from the stupa, shaking his arms at his sides. It was ridiculous, this weather.
“I don’t have any plans to go back. I just meant that stuff like this shouldn’t be put off. You never know what’ll happen, right?”
Uncle Ernie nodded his chin to one side and rubbed his palms together briskly. Watching him, Rudy felt suddenly selfish and inconsiderate. His uncle was an old man. His eyes were pouched, his hands gnarled; he used a walking stick. He should have been spending the afternoon in his cottage overlooking Kandy Lake, painting pictures and smoking his pipe.
The image broke Rudy’s inertia.
“Actually, Uncle, why don’t we turn around?” he said. “We’re gonna get soaked, and it’ll be dark by the time we get back to the car. We could try again tomorrow, or some other time.”
He expected hearty accord, but instead Uncle Ernie gave a contemptuous snort.
“Nonsense!”The old man took up his stick and set off across the terrace at a vigorous pace. “We’ve come this far, Rudy,” he called over his shoulder through the veil of mist. “As you say, there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring. Carpe diem! The path continues over here.”
“Stubborn old bugger,” Rudy muttered. Then, shouldering his knapsack, he jogged to catch up, his pelvis jolting painfully each time his feet struck the sodden red earth.
17
IT WAS JULY, but the air in Stanwick was cool, the sky overcast. The town was not at all as Clare remembered it. Or, rather, her feelings about it weren’t. She liked the grim stone architecture—soot-blackened, indestructible buildings, mutely observing town life as they’d been doing for hundreds of years. And she liked the queer pairings of those ancient buildings with the modern conveniences they now housed: a video rental shop, a therapeutic massage clinic, a mobile phone service centre, a juice bar—all closed, as it was Sunday. There were also, of course, venerable old businesses, like the gloomy knitwear shop that had been in the sam
e location since Queen Victoria’s silver jubilee, and Hobbs and Sons Chemists, est. 1921, against whose front window Clare now leaned. But aside from herself, tingling with the knowledge that Patrick Locke had once lived in the flat directly above her, the people passing up and down the sidewalks of Stanwick High Street seemed oblivious to the weight of history all around them.
Checking her watch, Clare calculated the time in Vancouver and crossed the street to the phone box next to the pub. An elderly woman beat her to it, so she stood outside, staring up at the windows of Patrick’s flat and revisiting her mother’s revelation.
There’s something I need to tell you about Alastair and me, she’d said, fingers twisting her wedding band, eyes on the placemat in front of her.
What is it?
A glance up, a deep breath.
It’s ... He and I weren’t ... Let me see. He wasn’t ...
He wasn’t my real father.
Oh, Clare.
The woman in the phone box raised her voice. “No, I didn’t! You’ll have to tell me.”
Who was it?
A man I knew in Stanwick. His name was Patrick. He was my father’s apprentice.
Did Dad know?
A merciless question. Twenty-five years of marriage and father-hood on the line. More twisting of the wedding band.
Yes. He knew.
“Every day! She’s a bizzum, that one.”
But you never told me.
Cruel?
Everything we do has consequences, pet. And then with something like this ... How could I know?
“—just said to her, ‘Listen, Mary, you’ll have to do something about that. You can’t let it go on.’”
Why are you telling me now?
I always expected I would, if ... Well, you were asking about the timing, when you came back from Vancouver, and then there was your holiday. And the Vantwests. That’s what did it in the end. I thought, if anything ever happened to me ...
The Vantwests. In the end it was the Vantwests. Strangers.
The woman in the booth, noticing Clare, pursed her mouth and reached for her handbag. “Listen, I need to go now, Janet,” she said. “There’s a lady wanting to use the phone.” She exited the booth with a greeting of “Chilly morning,” then crossed the street. Clare shut herself inside the Plexiglas box. She’d promised Emma she would call, but in the cool, Sunday-morning quietness of this faraway place, she wished she hadn’t. She wanted nothing from beyond the vault of low, grey clouds to touch her.
Of course, if she’d said nothing to Emma about her father, the phone call wouldn’t have been demanded. But she’d allowed herself to get carried away, seduced by the idea of possessing something that Emma found extraordinary, something that had actually shut her up and rendered her fumbling and awkward, if only for a few seconds. And the penalty for this brief moment of authority was the telephone call. Reading from the back of her phone card, she pressed an endless string of numbers, and when the intrusive ringing finally began, she turned to the solemn, mute buildings of the high street with a strange desire to be among them.
Emma answered almost immediately.
“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense. Have you found anything out?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“It wasn’t as if the chances were good. It was a long shot.”
“You’ve checked the phone books and asked around and everything?”
“As much as I’m going to.”
“You mean you’re giving up?”
Clare hesitated. There was a hint of compassion in Emma’s disappointment, a suggestion that she wanted Patrick Locke to be found for Clare’s own sake.
“Just for now. I don’t want to spend my whole trip on a wild goose chase.”
“No ... but this is important. I know you’re not looking for a father substitute, Clare, but still. It’s important.”
“People spend years doing these kinds of searches, Emma. I’ll write some letters when I get home. It’ll be better that way.”
“I don’t get it,” Emma said, and it was clear that she didn’t. “You’re already there. If I were you, I wouldn’t give up till I found him.”
Clare clenched the receiver tighter. “But you’re not me.”
For a moment neither spoke. The phone line crackled faintly.
“So when are you going to France?” Emma said at last.
“In a few days.”
There was another silence. Then they talked about France, and Marielle’s family’s cottage in Normandy, and the weather. Then Emma said it was late and she needed to get to bed. She spoke in the kind of tone that gets used at airports—a tone of resignation, of desire to be out of that unnatural, useless space, even if it means separation. At the end of the call, Clare stood with her hand on the receiver and a dull, empty-ish feeling inside. Then she noticed the teenage girls waiting outside the phone box, cigarettes hanging limply from their mouths, and she stepped out into the cool morning, where the feeling began gradually to subside. She hunted out the rectangular tower of Stanwick Abbey and headed in that direction. Her mother’s friend Margaret would be preaching in the abbey chapel at ten o’clock.
It was something of a cop-out, this going to church. She wasn’t interested in the service, or in meeting Margaret Biggar—a New Agey, hippy type, according to Isobel. Still, on Clare’s first visit to the phone box next to the pub, when it had come down to actually lifting the receiver and dialing one of the two numbers she had copied from the directory, Margaret’s had been the easier choice by far. Whether or not she would get around to the other, Clare couldn’t yet say. For the time being, there were Stanwick’s buildings and streets, the flat above the chemist’s shop, the rolling countryside with its stone fences and shaggy cows, and the service at the abbey. Enough to occupy her.
She turned off the high street onto a narrow cobbled road, which seemed to lead to the abbey. In her loose white blouse and her gypsy skirt, she imagined herself a nun from some medieval order, setting off on a pilgrimage. The image, so far removed from the embarrassing displays of the Skinners’ church, gave her a jolt of smug satisfaction, and as she walked she dismissed her mother’s warnings about Margaret Biggar’s New Agey–ness and orchestrated in her mind the kind of solemn, droning mass that belonged in a church like Stanwick Abbey. She hadn’t been inside the church yet, had only glimpsed its stone tower from the lower part of town. But the tower itself, stern and symmetrical, promised a no-nonsense place, where no one would hug and no one would ask her to share the Light of God.
The road gave way to a wide, hummocky lawn, where the abbey stood, magnificent in its enormity and its solitude. Clare leaned against a gnarled tree and admired the deep arches and sprawling buttresses, the masonry of unimaginable age. She watched the ant-like procession of people making their way toward a side entrance, then she crossed the lawn and joined the line. Inside the massive sanctuary she squinted and shivered. The rose window behind the altar admitted only a suggestion of light, while the stony maw overhead seemed to swallow all warmth. As she made her way up the centre aisle to the chapel, just off the transept, she felt a pang of regret that the service would not be held here in the abbey proper. She imagined sitting in an empty pew at the back and contemplating the implications of the remaining phone number she carried on a slip of paper in her bag. The number was no guarantee, of course. There was only one P. Locke in the directory, and if it turned out not to be him, then the story she’d told Emma would be true. Her search could take years. But for now she allowed herself to believe that the P. Locke on Farrell Road was the one she was after, and that an hour of contemplation in a grim stone sanctuary could prepare her to meet him.
The chapel, however, was nothing like the abbey. Its walls were white plaster; the seating consisted of a dozen or so rows of straight-backed chairs. The lectern-style pulpit was flanked by flag standards, and the modest stained-glass window behind the piano featured an art deco crucifixion. It was far from ideal,
but it would do. Clare sat near the back, and as the seats around her filled she studied the program and flipped through the hymn book. A woman sat next to her with a friendly nod, to which Clare responded with a smile.
At ten o’clock a black-robed pianist took his place and arranged sheets of music while the congregation scuffled and coughed itself to order. There was a moment of silent anticipation, then the pianist leaned forward and began the processional hymn. Reverend Margaret Biggar, enormously fat, with round, ruddy cheeks and a mass of silver and black hair, ambled down the aisle in a tent-like white cassock and purple stole and took her place behind the pulpit, her arrival perfectly synchronized with the piano’s lusty final chords. She nodded in the direction of the pianist then turned to the congregation. “Good morning and welcome to St. Giles Chapel,” she said, her voice low and businesslike. “We come together this morning to share and celebrate the word of God and the teachings of his son, Jesus Christ. I can see we have some visitors this morning, so a special welcome to you.”
Clare clenched the hymn book in her lap, but no one paid her any attention.
Margaret grasped the sides of the pulpit. In the same businesslike manner, she marched through the prayers of Adoration and Confession, and when she reached the Lord’s Prayer, her voice slipped into the background, and the congregation took up the familiar recitation with Calvinistic fervour. Clare searched the minister’s voice and gestures for hints of New Agey–ness and concluded finally that Isobel couldn’t really have known the woman all that well. If Margaret had known Patrick, the visit to her church might still have been worthwhile. A bridge of sorts. But according to Isobel, the two had never met. Clare glanced at her watch and sank back in her chair. In the shift from prayers to Bible readings, she imagined the pointless exchange that awaited her after the service. Then, blocking out the proceedings altogether, she improvised something better—she and Margaret at the chapel entrance, the rest of the congregation off drinking tea and coffee in the hall. Patrick Locke on the horizon.