by Cole Morton
‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, okay.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she says.
‘I get that. I’m trying to stay calm, Sarah, doing my best. Will you let me try and say something? I need to get this off my chest. For my own sake. I could have gone over that day, when I let her ashes go. I wanted to. I understand that desire to be with your mum – you can’t know how much. I’m a coward, maybe. It’s a long way down. I have seen the bodies, I know what happens to them. That’s not it, though. Rí didn’t want me to go. She didn’t want that.’
The wind hides Sarah’s face in a wrap of hair.
‘I heard her voice that day. She said no. Don’t do it. Maybe I’m mad. I hear voices. Her voice. No others, just Rí. She talks to me. I don’t know what it is, Sarah, but it sounds like her. She says the things she used to say, and that day she said no. Live. Breathe. Seize the day, bite the head off life – that was one of her favourites – and chew it until the juices run down your chin. Be alive!’
‘Did you talk back?’
‘I do. I told her: “That’s easy to say when you’re dead!”’
Sarah’s hand goes to her mouth to stifle a laugh through her hair. He puts his hand on hers and returns it to the rail. ‘Hold on. It’s okay, I was trying to be funny. You’re different, you know that?’
‘To her? Thanks for that.’
‘No. I mean different to when you came here. You would not have laughed. You would have given me that face.’
‘What face?’
‘This one.’ He tries to do a deadpan stare, and turns down the corners of his mouth with his fingers, but cracks up.
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No, no. Yes. Maybe. A bit. Sorry. I don’t get much company up here.’
‘I can see why.’
‘You don’t have to go. Did I just say that? Oh God. Sorry.’
‘I do, Gabe. One way or another. Not long now.’ She looks towards the dawn. A crowbar of light is pushing a space between the weight of dark clouds and black sea. ‘Almost time.’
‘For God’s sake, Sarah!’ His voice flies out over the edge, dying into the drop. ‘Look, hang on, I’m sorry, Rí is right. There is too much beauty to see, too much to enjoy, too much life to live; you can’t just throw it away. You have to swallow the bitter and taste the sweet. You have to go on because there is no choice, this is what we have. This is what we do. It’s a privilege, Sarah, a privilege. You’ve made me see that, coming in here where nobody asked you, filling the place up with yourself. I didn’t want you here, but you came anyway and you’re waking me up, making me feel. I don’t want to feel, I want it to stop. I want to sleep, but you won’t let me and Rí won’t let me and you’re both bloody right. This life is a wonderful thing. Look. The sea never stops shifting, shining even in the night; that sun coming up over there won’t be stopped whether I’m here or not, but I want to be here because even when it hurts, so much, the pain is life and life is right. Live every moment. She had it stolen from her. She had no choice, do you see that? No choice. You have. You’re making the wrong one! Come on, Sarah . . . get a grip!’
He’s gone way too far. Sarah recoils, he can see her pained face in the light from the room, and now she is moving towards him with a weird, open smile, and maybe this is it, maybe he can stop her, because Rí would want that, because it would matter. Sarah’s hand is on his neck, she is leaning in close and her lips brush his cheek in a kiss and she whispers something in his ear. He feels the warmth of her breath and the shudder of arousal before he realizes what she has said.
‘You know nothing.’
Nothing, she thinks, running down the stairs. Nothing, she thinks, striding down the big steps and over the gravel on the land side of the tower.
‘Nothing!’
Nothing about the grief, the pain that never goes away, the throbbing, constant pain in her head, in her body – the doctors say it does not exist, but it is everywhere, always, now and all the time – he knows nothing about that or the coldness, the chill, the emptiness in her like a dead thing. ‘You don’t know,’ she says, stumbling over the ground beyond the lighthouse wall, where there is only deeper shadow and her feet are unsure. The ground is blue, her feet are blue, her clothes and hands are blue, the sea is blue and the sky is a deep, dark, mournful, moody black and blue. He knows nothing about her, nothing about the way Jack comes at her, nothing about the way he leaves her when he has done what he needs to do, nothing about the nothingness inside her. There is nothing. No feeling, no hope, no humour, no laughter, no light. She is all shut down. So let it stop now, this morning. Let it cease. Let there be an end to all this and let her go.
She feels her way along the wall to where it breaks down, to where she knows there is a little wooden stake driven into the ground, near the edge. Here it is. She plants her feet wide and opens her arms as if to plead for mercy, but it is far too late for that. The test will be negative, she knows that. She looks down and sees the blue ground give way to the rumpled blue sea just in front of her feet and knows she need only take a step to end her life now. You don’t jump, you walk. One step at a time. Just one. The little fire in the east makes her think of her mother in the hospital and the blinding white light. She opens her arms wide and feels the wind take her. This is the way they go. She is going.
She is dying for a wee.
Forty-six
A wing blocks his way into the room at the top of the tower and Gabe realizes the absurdity of it all: his name and this mythical thing, this creation of Rí’s. An angel for you, Gabriel. Her joke. Her last laugh. Her gift. Looking out for him. Always and for ever.
‘I want to live,’ he says and feels a hand inside him, moving in his guts, sliding behind the back of his lungs, pushing on up through his oesophagus, filling his throat, cramming his mouth, spilling out of his mouth and into the room, the lantern room in the sky in the cold morning: a laugh. A bloody laugh. A big, fat, unexpected shoulder-heaving bubble of a laugh, full of transparent joy, glistening with a surface sheen that is all the colours of the rainbow, floating upwards above him and bursting all over his face with a bloody great pop.
Forty-seven
Magda pours coffee in the breakfast room at the Gap, having given Jack a laminated menu of items she knows he will not want once he has heard what she has to say.
‘This is not so good maybe, but I have something to show you. I have not long come from the hill.’ The dish of fruit salad and the individual selection boxes of Rice Krispies, Frosties and Coco Pops remain untouched as she speaks quietly and calmly. ‘I was on patrol with the Guardians and I saw her.’
Jack shifts around in his chair, knocking the coffee.
‘She was in the lighthouse. I saw something in the tower and I took a picture on my phone, but I did not realize until just now. I think it is her. Look . . .’
She offers the black Samsung, already open at the image. Jack’s hands shake. What is this? What is he looking at? A blurred, grainy photo, barely lit. Some kind of weird canopy, spread out like wings. The guy . . . with Sarah. Is it Sarah, with her arms tied up above her head? As Magda coos, he curses and questions her and demands that she call the police and tell them he is right and Sarah has been kidnapped and she is in the lighthouse and he is going there and they should come with the dogs and helicopter and whatever they need to stop him because he is going to get his wife and kill that son of a bitch.
And he goes. Angry, way beyond anger. The chalk explodes under his feet. The shush of the sea is a loud shut up, get on with it, get there and find her; the tang of the ozone is tear gas to his mouth and nose. Streaming, weeping, oozing, he climbs the steep, stony steps at the bottom of the hill with his calves screaming and his chest on fire. The sun is up and in his eyes, the dawn is unexpectedly hot now. The world is against him
. The gull stretching black-tipped wings on a wall and laughing. The morning chorus squealing and squalling. The buttercups and daisies, the purple clusters and those little studs of vivid orange set against the grass and the grass itself all jewelled with dew and burning green – all these are insults. The fat bee boozing on a bright yellow celandine, the butterflies doing their stupid little dance, the buzzing, whirring things he can hardly see. The whole of creation laughing in his face, teasing. So rich, so fucking fecund. All this was made or meant or just happened by accident – who cares how? – life bursting out from every pore of the planet but from him, the dead, lost, useless boy with the empty seed, lying to everybody the whole time. This is not just her problem, whatever he says. It is him as well, with his hopeless sperm, his lazy boys, his blanks, his squirt of nothing. Useless, pointless Jack, drumming on his thigh with his fingers as he climbs the hill, all clatter but no bang, all noise but no melody.
Behind him, the faces of the Seven Sisters are veiled in shadow, ashamed. The sea sound is harsher up here, nastier. Get on with it, you creep, the waves say. Get her. Ahead on the broad back of the hill the bright white tails of rabbits twitch and scatter. Rabbits everywhere: prolific little bunnies who drop more little bunnies as easily as breathing, a countless crowd parting before him, nearly under his feet. So hot already, breathing hurts. He climbs the hill, seeming to step upwards into the sky. Then there it is.
The tower, with the sun behind.
Jack stops, gasping for breath. Through the binoculars Magda gave him, squinting against the brilliant light, he sees the figure of a man in the lantern room, arms outstretched as if on a cross. Holding that pose. Sarah must be up there somewhere . . . A smoker’s cough rips his lungs, twists his ribs, and he hacks out phlegm on to the flinty chalk and grass.
For a moment, it all pauses. Up here where the scale is vast, where you can see for twenty miles or more, everything is still. The sea is utterly calm, a swathe of iris blue. Then a hare tears across the grass in front of him – a hare now, for Christ’s sake – the ears trailing, flying for the cover of the gorse. A fox appears from nowhere, caught between chasing the hare and glaring at Jack, and settles for the glare. What are you doing up here so early, loser?
This climb is taking longer than Jack bargained for, it is further than it seemed. Hands on his knees, he heaves in air to his lungs and feels his heart thump. Then he goes again, onwards and upwards towards the tower, like a flaming arrow to end a siege. Picking up time again. Sarah, a march in his head. One-two, one-two. Sarah, Sarah. Somebody has drawn in chalk all over the bench up ahead in a language and symbols he does not understand – what the hell is this? – and a crisp packet snagged in the gorse, a Coke can rammed down a rabbit hole. These filthy bastards, these human vermin spewing their junk-food guts all over the beautiful earth, and Jack is raging against them now as he strides up the hill and then runs full pelt towards the tower, where the strange figure still stands in the lantern room like a beast in a cage looking down on him. A beast in a cage – Sarah in a cage. He will find her, he will rescue her from the beast.
He throws himself against the wall, feels a sharp dig at his ribs, swings his leg over and he is in now, beyond the barricade and up to the wall, banging on the wall, useless, soundless slapping on the stone wall, banging on the window – loud resounding claps into the dark room – but where is the door, where is the door? He finds the door and pounds the frosted glass with his fists, shouting, ‘Let me in! I know you’ve got her. Let me in! Sarah, I love you. I am coming for you. I love you. Let me in . . .’
Forty-eight
Sarah is thinking of her father. On the other side of the wall beyond the lighthouse, oblivious to Jack’s approach, summoned back from the edge by the burning in her bladder, burning through the numbness, she remembers a walk with her dad on these cliffs one early morning just like this. It was one of their summer holidays. He held her hand and told her the names of the birds they were seeing, but he made them all up. The Squirly Bird. The Great Black-tipped Mugger Bird. The Tiny Tit. That made her laugh; she was thirteen and conscious of her growing body. When she wanted the loo he made her go behind a bush, the last time she ever did that. A wild wee, he called it. She should do that now, have a wild wee here, because what does it matter if she does not do the test?
‘Every day brings a fresh miracle,’ her father said from the other side of the bush, where he had turned right away from her, to keep a lookout for anyone who might see. There was nobody about at all. ‘Today’s miracle is your presence with me here on this walk, my splendidly moody daughter.’ She hated him. She did not want to be there. She got up at that insane hour and went out with him that morning because he made her do it, by wanting it so much. Now she remembers it as one of the great walks of her life, one of the precious times. Apart from the wee. Funny how things turn out.
That same man, older now but still her father, said he was gobsmacked when she went to him a month ago. She let herself into the rectory – more like a council flat – with his spare key and stood there looking at him for a while on the edge of the room, away from the flickering blue light of the television screen. He looked older and heavier, with silver at his temples and his black hair in need of a cut. The belly of his black clerical shirt was spilling over his black clerical trousers. His shirt was open at the throat, his dog collar on the floor. The mole on his cheek had swollen and sprouted hairs, his face was set with shadows. Resting, weary. Then he sensed her.
‘My love!’ he said, jumping up in his slippers, hastily brushing crumbs off his chest. ‘This is brilliant. Wow. I’m gobsmacked. How are you?’
There was no need to answer that, but he was even more surprised when she asked to read the letter from her mother.
‘I’m ready for it, Dad.’
‘Why now?’
‘The treatment. I need her. And you. We would like to take up your offer, thank you. We could not do it without that money, whatever Jack says.’
‘I’m glad. I’ll pray. I was praying,’ said her father.
‘I know. I thought you might be.’
‘There you are. It’s my job to worry, my nature to pray.’
‘Good line. You should make a note of it.’
The eyebrows of the Reverend Robert Jones were raised. ‘I seem to remember using it once or twice already, over the years, but thank you.’
‘I’m sorry he lost his temper.’
‘Are you two okay?’
She nodded, but he did not know what to make of his daughter’s expression or what to say. They held each other’s gaze, blaze to blaze in the semi-darkness, Sarah standing and her father sitting again, his fork halfway to his mouth, until he spoke again.
‘You have taken your time.’
‘You let me,’ she said.
He put down his fork and held his arms out.
She knelt down and snuggled in tight to her daddy.
He stroked her hair. ‘Oh Sarah.’
They let the grandfather clock tick and the church bells ring on the quarter hour before they moved. Then the clock went on ticking, as Sarah and her father knelt on the floor or laid on a cushion or stood to adjust the light for a better look at the photographs and keepsakes and letters of a woman called Jasmine, who had been born and raised in the mountains in the blue sky and warm rain, and come a long way to fall in love with a silly, stubborn, strong Scotsman who could not believe his good fortune.
‘I loved her so much,’ he said, but Sarah had always known that; how could she not have done? How could she not have noticed the way he looked at his daughter when there was a christening or somebody was having their banns read? How could she not have noticed the hour he always spent on his own between the morning service and the big lunch on Christmas Day, in his bedroom with the door locked? Now she could hold the same fragile, yellowed papers, and read the words her mother had written to him. There were not many,
because they were seldom apart. Just a note here, an airmail slip there, when she went home to visit. ‘Do not worry, my darling Bobby,’ she wrote, in large, looping letters, and signed off with three big, loose cross-kisses. There was one more letter, but this one had her name on it. To have opened it as a child would have been to let all the hurt and longing overwhelm her, and she could not have stood it. Not then, nor for so many years after; but she was ready now. She was strong enough. It was what she had come for. But she would do it on her own, in private, not with her father. Away from him, to spare them both. So instead Sarah touched a photograph of them both laughing on their wedding day, the bride trying to cover her mouth with a cupped hand but the sunlight of her smile spilling out anyway.
It was late that night when Sarah smoothed the tissue paper of the wedding album and closed the last page, and her father tucked the last loose photographs back into their case. White, no bigger than a hat box and lined with pink silk with a mirror set inside. ‘She bought this for the honeymoon. It was not even big enough for her underwear.’ He was tired. She felt her father tremble when she held him again, and she stayed there with him for as long as she could, steady and still.
But now she is here on the edge of this cliff in the startling beauty of the morning, no longer as sure about what to do as she was in the dark. And somehow, on the wind or in her imagination, at this weary, wobbly moment, she hears a voice.
‘Mum?’
‘Sarah? Where are you? I’m coming for you!’
That’s not her mum, that’s Jack. He’s back. She has to run, get back into the house before he sees her. Not easy with a full bladder. Sarah waddles as fast as she can over the gravel and sees him up at the door, but he has not seen her. Good. She can duck in through the window, like she did when she first came here, to get out of the storm, when the window was flapping in the wind. It is still loose. She hauls herself over the ledge and into the room with the bed covered in plastic, and there is the letter. There is the letter she lost. There it is on the bed. The letter from her mother. Of all the times. How can that be? What is it doing here? It should be floating on the waves, caught up in some fishing net or broken into pieces by now, but here it is intact, inside the blank white envelope her father gave her. The letter from her mother that she could have read at any time over the years but refused, but this is here and now, with her bladder bursting and her maniac of a husband about to break down the door.