Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  The mark on the girl’s face was fading, but her lip was split at the corner and blood welled through the cut.

  ‘Are you all right?’ She spoke to the girl but kept her eyes on the boy.

  ‘None of your business, bitch.’ His voice was raspy, but almost comically high-pitched. He must have endured hell in secondary school because of it.

  ‘Please, Timmy. It’s all right. Let’s go.’ The girl placed a tentative, placating hand on his shoulder.

  But Timmy was not to be so placated. ‘Shut up,’ he snarled. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You should listen to her.’ Justine spoke carefully. ‘This is private property.’

  ‘Private property,’ he mimicked. ‘Maybe I like private property.’

  ‘Maybe you do. But if you don’t leave now I’m calling the police. So be a good boy… Timmy.’

  His face turned red. A vein swelled in his temple. He stepped forward threateningly, but the girl—a new note of urgency in her voice—grabbed his arm tightly. ‘Come on, love. We don’t need the trouble. Let’s go.’

  He moved his shoulder violently and tore free from her grip. Hand knotted into a tight fist, he struck the girl savagely against the side of her face. She screamed and fell to her knees, her arms held protectively over her head.

  This had gone far enough. Justine lunged forward. His arms were away from his body and his stomach was exposed. It was almost too easy. Without hesitation she rammed her fist into his diaphragm. When he snapped forward, she brought up her knee. There—take that. She heard the deep gasp of pain. ‘Cunt,’ he shrieked. ‘Cunt.’

  Still bent over, he swung his arm wildly and grabbed her by the collar of her jacket. He was surprisingly strong. She tried to twist free, but he jerked her toward him with such force that her blouse cut painfully into her neck. His face was next to hers and she could smell alcohol. ‘You’ll fucking pay for this. See if you don’t. You’ll—’

  Without hesitation she grabbed his free hand with both her hands and pulled his little finger viciously in the wrong direction, away from his palm. The howl of pain that left his mouth was truly harrowing. He let go of her and staggered to the side, his hand to his mouth. ‘My finger. You broke my finger, you fuck, you. My finger. You broke it.’ He made a gurgling noise deep inside his throat.

  ‘Get out! I’m calling the police, right now. Get out!’

  He gave her a sick look, didn’t move.

  ‘I mean it. Get out!’

  He started walking, stumbling slightly, his hand clutched underneath his armpit. She stepped back as he passed by her, but the fight seemed to be out of him. Giving her a final wretched look, he rounded the corner and she heard his footsteps on the gravel pathway. She waited a few moments, her body tense, but when he did not reappear, she walked quickly to the archway and looked out. He had reached the trees and was limping dejectedly down the long avenue in the direction of the gates. His head was bowed.

  She looked back at the girl who was watching her with horrified eyes.

  ‘You shouldn’a done that.’

  ‘What?’ Justine stared.

  ‘He’ll get even, you’ll see.’

  ‘No, he won’t. We’re going into the house right now and we’re calling the police. You can tell them everything. Get him charged with assault.’

  ‘No!’ The girl’s mouth was working. ‘You mustn’t do that. Please, you mustn’t. Promise you won’t. Promise!’

  The girl was obviously simple-minded, and it was rather galling that she wasn’t showing any signs of gratitude either.

  ‘Are you crazy? You should take a look at your face. You’re going to have a black eye tomorrow. What’s wrong with you? You should report him. Of course you should.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t. Please. Please. Please don’t.’ Her voice was rising hysterically and she was actually wringing her hands.

  This was ridiculous. She felt like shaking the girl. ‘Look—’ She stopped. It probably wasn’t going to help if she shouted. ‘Look,’ she said again in a milder tone. ‘Your boyfriend is abusive. He should be stopped. Helped.’ Yeah, right. With a cricket bat cracked over his head. ‘If you don’t report him, this will happen again. You don’t want that, do you?’

  ‘He loves me. He does.’

  ‘He has a crappy way of showing it.’

  ‘No, really. He loves me. He’s good to me, but I made him angry tonight. It wasn’t his fault, see.’

  ‘No, I don’t see.’

  ‘I’ll tell the coppers you’re lying. I’ll tell them it’s all a mistake. If I don’t press charges, they won’t care.’

  Which was probably true. And suddenly Justine realised she was exhausted. Her head throbbed and her neck felt sore. Now that the adrenaline was ebbing away she felt cold and shivery and her overwhelming wish was to get rid of this girl with her chalk-white face who had started weeping, streaks of mascara running down her cheeks.

  Feeling helpless now and irritated beyond belief, she stared at the girl who was breathing noisily, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

  Oh, to hell with it. ‘OK. You win. Let’s go to my car and I’ll run you into town.’

  ‘I’m all right. If I go now quickly, I can catch up with him.’

  ‘Wait.’

  The girl stopped, one foot in front of the other, poised for flight. She looked apprehensive, as if afraid Justine might have changed her mind about the police again.

  ‘This room.’ Justine gestured at the door with its brand new padlock. ‘You two—you used this room, didn’t you?’

  The girl’s voice was flat. ‘We have no other place to go, see. Timmy, he still lives at home. And me mum, she doesn’t like Timmy.’

  At least stupidity didn’t run in the family. ‘Well, tell Timmy not to come around again. If I see him anywhere near this place, I will report him to the police at once, is that understood?’

  The girl’s face was set now and the tears had drained back into their ducts. ‘Can I go now?’

  Justine sighed. ‘ I don’t even know your name.’

  The girl stared. Then she said softly, ‘It’s not your business now, is it?’ She turned around and ran down the walkway and through the arch.

  • • •

  ON THE FAR SIDE of the quadrangle, on the opposite side of the arch, the Watcher was looking on. His heart was pounding with excitement. His palms were wet.

  If there was one thing all his years as a Watcher had taught him, it was that courage was in scarce supply. Aggression was common, but a warrior heart was rare. Justine hadn’t backed down an inch. She was a warrior.

  And it could have got ugly. March had something of a reputation in Ainstey. Small stuff, mainly—joyriding, vandalism—but there was also a rumour going around that he and some friends had beaten up one of Mrs McEvoy’s lodgers after an argument in a pub. The man had ended up in hospital.

  And Tim March was just the kind of vicious bully-boy who would seek retribution for tonight’s events. It would take him a while to get his courage up again, but Justine had humiliated him in front of his girlfriend, a dangerous thing to do. March would want revenge. As for the pudgy little girlfriend, the Watcher rather thought her name was Holly. He hardly ever came in contact with the girl, but he knew the mother. The girl was running now, her fat legs flailing. Stupid little cow.

  He looked back to where Justine was still standing. In the harsh overhead light she looked utterly drained. Her face was white and her eyes black shadows. He saw her open her handbag and remove her keys. She walked to the back door and fitted the key in the lock. The door opened inward.

  Just as he thought she was about to enter, she suddenly swung around. She seemed to be looking straight at him. For a long moment she stared in his direction, her eyes probing the darkness.

  He tensed, he hardly breathed. He was half-hidden behind a pillar but he couldn’t take the chance of trying to move completely out of her sight. The slightest movement and she’d see him. For just a moment he remembered anot
her night, nine years ago, when he had also watched from the shadows and Adam Buchanan had suddenly looked at him, their eyes meeting in the darkness. Buchanan’s eyes unseeing; his own filled with panicked excitement.

  Justine didn’t move. Did she sense he was out here?

  Contrary to popular belief, it was very difficult to observe someone without their knowledge. That indefinable feeling of knowing that you’re being watched was man’s true sixth sense. He had seen it over and over in his years of playing the game. The subjects could be completely relaxed, their antennae in sleep mode, but if he watched them for too long, they’d sense it. And after what happened tonight, Justine’s senses were already on high alert.

  She knew he was out here.

  A subject sensing her Watcher; on the one hand there was nothing more thrilling. A connection was established. But if she saw him now, it would be the end. That was the rule. The game ended if the other player saw his face. But it was too soon, much too soon. The game was just starting…

  A telephone rang inside the house. Her head moved to the side. The line between Watcher and subject slackened. She turned around and walked through the door, closing it behind her. A light went on inside the kitchen.

  The relief was almost unbearable. He should be leaving now but he felt himself quite, quite unable to even place one foot in front of the other. And so he stood there in the darkness without moving, completely rigid. He stared at the yellow window half-face from behind the pillar, one eye wide open.

  FIFTEEN

  THE PAW PRINTS were large. Even in the moonlight they were easy to see. Adam stopped and sank to his knee to examine the dark row of prints. He felt a wave of relief washing over him.

  The prints belonged to a strandwolf and, judging from their size, they belonged to an animal that was bigger and more powerful than Beatrice. So these prints could only belong to Dante. He had finally tracked the animal down.

  For two weeks there had been no trace of it. Not at the cave and not at any of the animal’s usual haunts. He had begun to despair of ever finding the strandwolf alive again. And he was deeply concerned for Beatrice and the cubs.

  But here it was—evidence that a windwalker had passed this way: the prints beautifully formed, a pattern of shadows against the smooth moonlit slip-face of the dune. Delicate, impossibly fine, as ephemeral as a memory conceived in a dream. Later tonight the wind would blow, sweeping the sand into smoking crests, and these prints would disappear as though they had never been. But for now they were tangible proof of life.

  He got to his feet. The joy that swept through him made him smile into the darkness and throw his arms wide.

  • • •

  THE FEELING of elation lingered until late into the evening. As he sat down in his battered armchair, a glass of Johnnie Walker at his elbow, he was feeling tired but relaxed and looked forward to opening the box of books he had collected from Mark earlier in the week.

  His pocket knife sliced cleanly through the masking tape and he pushed back the flaps of the box. Apart from the four books he had ordered, it also contained a half a dozen or so magazines.

  The cover of one of the magazines caught his eye. It was a stunning picture of a domed ceiling from which dangled what appeared to be brass spheres representing the heavenly planets. Something about the picture was deeply haunting. It was as if this beautifully conceived image was, in fact, not a reflection of an actual place in real life, but only an approximation of it. As though the photographer had drawn from memory and had somehow, magically, created a unique, faintly surreal image shaped by her mind, not the camera’s mechanical eye.

  And there was something else. He knew he had never seen this picture before—he was convinced of it—but something about it triggered a powerful sense of recognition and a response that was almost physical.

  He touched the glossy paper with throbbing fingertips. ‘The Universe of Justine Callaway.’

  It was a photography magazine. He hadn’t ordered it so it must belong to Mark and had somehow found its way into his own batch of books by mistake. He opened the magazine to the contents page and worked his finger down the row of entries. ‘Page 37. Justine Callaway: A Different Perspective.’

  He did not immediately read the printed text. He was too captivated by the black-and-white photographs that filled the pages. They had the same eerie, otherworldly quality that permeated the image on the cover. Enthralled, he turned from one page to the next. What made these pictures so unsettling was that they all had this strange, dreamlike feel to them even though some of the pictures were horrifying images of real violence.

  Earthquake survivors staring into the camera, their faces stupid with shock. Victims of the Ebola virus with eyes drowning in blood. A village covered in a white shroud of volcanic ash. Pictures of crumpled, rag-doll bodies decomposing in the Rwandan sun or wet with snow in icy Chechnya. Brutal street dramas in places where sanity was lost. Pictures of man turning against man; nature turning against man; man turning against nature.

  But oddly enough, the sense of alienation was strongest in her pictures of unpopulated buildings and empty spaces. Beautifully proportioned rooms. Fine architectural details. Space, volume, light. And a sense of loss so profound he felt his heart contract. A troubled eye, a bruised mind had conceived these. A mind precisely tuned to pain.

  A mind… A mind like his own.

  The thought brought him up sharp. For a moment he sat quietly, almost afraid to breathe; afraid of losing this feeling.

  There was a picture of her. ‘Photograph of the photographer at work by Barry Winthrop.’ It filled half a page and was the only colour picture among the other cool black-and-white images. It showed her about to shoot a still-life of a spray of flowers drooping from a striking asymmetrical vase. She was leaning forward. In her one hand, hefted to shoulder height, was the camera. The other hand was stretched out, touching one of the crimson blossoms, probably arranging it to best effect. Her fingers were broad-tipped, the palms narrow. Around both wrists were clamped broad, chunky silver bracelets with turquoise beaded clasps.

  Her face was in three-quarter profile. She was concentrating intently and the expression on her face was one of purpose. Thin, fastidious nose. Generous mouth. Short, fair hair sticking out from her head like a halo. The colour of her eyes uncertain. She was wearing a white tank top and her arms were thin but strongly corded with muscles.

  He turned his attention to the opening paragraph, aware that his heart was beating quickly.

  Justine Ann Callaway. Freelance photographer. Born in Britain; educated in Sweden, Japan, Kuwait, Australia and the USA. Now based in London. Parents divorced. Father a financial consultant. Mother a homemaker. Older brother, Jonathan, a gifted musician, had died a few months before in a house fire.

  He paused. The tone of the article was becoming arch, hinting at scandal. Brother and sister on holiday in Cornwall. A rented cottage. A smouldering cigarette. A fire in which one sibling perished, the other to blame.

  His eyes travelled to her picture once again. When was this photograph taken? Before or after her dead brother’s shadow had attached itself to her footsteps? He touched his finger softly to her face.

  The article continued with a discussion of her work, citing the opinions of peers and critics. Several paragraphs followed that were devoted to a demanding technical description of her photographic techniques. He read the sentences in frustration. He was searching for something else, something personal. Her own words. A glimpse into her thoughts.

  And, unexpectedly, there it was. The writer had wrapped up the piece with a cryptic question-and-answer interview. The interview started out innocuously enough, but as he continued to read he could feel his breathing becoming strained; as though he was underwater with his air about to give out. Toward the end of the interview her responses to the questions were careful, deliberate hammer blows hitting him between the eyes.

  Which photographers do you most admire?

  Eve Arnold: fir
st woman to have joined the Magnum Agency. And Lee Miller: savage shutterbabe.

  Do you have a motto in life? If so, what is it?

  A line I borrowed from Tori Amos: ‘My fear is greater than my faith, but I walk.’

  What makes you happy?

  Music.

  What do you wish for yourself?

  A willing heart.

  What is your biggest fear?

  That much of my work makes me so preoccupied with death that I’m blind to life.

  What is the most irrational feeling you have ever experienced?

  The feeling that I am missing someone I’ve never met.

  What do you think is the source of goodness?

  Joy.

  Of evil?

  Anger. Like a fire covered with smoke, a mirror with dust, an embryo with its sac—it is everywhere. A sick passion.

  If you could be granted one wish, what would it be?

  A second chance.

  The words receded and expanded before his eyes. His chest felt constricted. He got up from the chair and his sudden movement sent the glass of whisky flying through the air in an amber arc, smashing against the floor in a shower of crystal. He walked to the makeshift bookshelves against the wall, and as he had done so many times over the past years, he pulled out a thin green paperback from among the many volumes.

  The Bhagavad Gita. It fell open in his hand at the page he had read a thousand times before, the spine broken from being opened at this exact page so often.

  So what is it that drives a man to commit evil, Varshneya, even against his will but as if compelled to it by force?

  It is desire, it is anger, produced from the seed of passion, all-consuming, all-injuring; understand that this is the enemy here.

  As a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror by dust; as an embryo is covered by its sac, this world is enveloped by that.