by John Samuel
Again that word rupture, the French way, comes into my mind. Cette lumineuse rupture, such an elegant description of this process, the secret architecture of mind and memory split open like a pomegranate in the sun. I had a lot of time for the guy who wrote that, used to watch him all the time – bow tie, very clear eyes – although his name escapes me for the time being. The point is, I can’t be in Will’s body and not expect to take on the vestiges of his life. I was a fool to have believed I could.
The first of the pictures I pick up is of Will and Izzy holding hands in a garden, not here – it’s the garden in St Lucia. I know that without even having to think about it. I know the house too, up on the brow of a hill – I can see the tatters of mist in the morning, I can hear the squabbling of the birds, I can the smell the flowers – that, more than anything: the rich scent of flowers thickening the air. And the heat. The lawn is a dense carpet of Bermuda grass edged with spiky bougainvillea and the small peeping blooms of crotons. In the far left of the picture the white boards of the house are only just visible behind clumps of coleus plants, their broad, lurid leaves spread like butterfly wings in the sun. The sky is a saturated, tropical blue. Will is just a child here, no more than four or five. He is holding something in his hand, a stuffed monkey, worn and stringy from never being allowed out of his sight. Chop-Chop – that’s its name. His sister is looking right into the camera, a head smaller than Will, the spitting image of Maia, her skin brown as a nut and her hair bleached white by sun and sea. But Will is looking slightly off to the side, as if someone is approaching, someone his sister and the photographer have yet to notice.
Luc, who must have heard me moving about, has come back in the room.
‘You’re up,’ he says, his tone and expression both suggesting, as predicted, that he considers this to be unwise.
‘I am,’ I say, placing the picture carefully back where I found it. ‘And Luc, I have to ask …’ I turn to face him with my friendliest grin ‘… what have you done to me?’
He looks a little taken aback. ‘Has it not helped?’
‘No, no, no,’ I tell him, ‘I’m joking – I’m fine – better than fine. The pain has completely disappeared – you’re a magician. I’m just saying that something else has happened too. What you did has loosened something, in my mind, I mean.’ Again, I’m doing my best to make this sound like a positive thing but the expression on his face would suggest that the message isn’t getting through; in fact, this would appear to be the worst news he has heard for quite some time.
‘I think you should lie down,’ he tells me.
‘No really, I’m fine.’
The trouble with these situations (by which I mean those times when other people have come to view you, rightly or not, as slightly unhinged) is that whatever you say to them takes on the air of exactly the sort of thing a slightly unhinged person would say. Such as No really, I’m fine.
‘I just want to look at the pictures,’ I tell him, making it worse.
‘I’ll go and get Izzy,’ he says.
When she comes I find it difficult not to think of her as a child, if that makes any sense. It’s almost like we’re both still children, the tiny, sun-kissed shoots from the picture. She stops halfway across the room to set down the tray she is carrying – she has brought tea and biscuits. I have a different picture in my hand now. It was taken in the Fifties by the look of it: a man in a suit standing in front of a black touring car. He’s wearing a hat like they all did then, and he has a pipe in his mouth, clenched between his teeth. He’s not smiling. It must be one of Will’s grandparents, and yet I can’t seem to place him – I know something about him, though, I just can’t put my finger on what it is. It’s too quick to grasp, flitting past me like a bat.
‘Which one have you got there?’ She has walked up behind me and is peering over my shoulder.
It gives me quite a start and I thrust the picture back on the shelf a little too quickly, making some of the knick-knacks fall over. A china toad dressed smartly in a top coat and tails has the delicate stem of his umbrella snapped out of his hand. I start fiddling around trying to get it to stand back in place but it won’t balance properly without the umbrella.
‘Don’t worry,’ she gently takes it away. ‘My fault. I’m always doing it to Luc – he says I should tie a bell around my ankle or one day I’ll give him a heart attack.’
There’s such an easy way about her, I feel like I’ve known her all my life. Before Will even, back in the dark light. That’s how I think of it now, my state before this: a dark light. It’s nonsensical, I know, but it’s the perfect description – I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.
She has picked up a different picture and has wormed in against the side of me, cuddling me with her spare arm, holding the photo up for me to see. It’s Will in school uniform, not that much older than in the Caribbean pictures but in a different time, with less sun in him. Two teeth are missing from his smile.
‘Billy the kid,’ she gives me a little squeeze. ‘Come on,’ she says, putting it back, not where she found it, just shoved at random among the others. ‘Our tea’s getting cold.’
We sit happily together on the sofa. In fact, with the possible exception of Luc’s medical attentions, which don’t really count, it’s the first time I’ve managed to properly relax in the company of another since I jumped into this mess. I ask her questions about life in Paris, about when she thinks she might start back at her work again. I find I know things about her – such as the fact that she’s a translator, an occasional writer of movie subtitles, a keen runner – and so my questions make a little more sense now. That jarring note has gone. She tells me she doesn’t know anymore, that it’s been so long since she had the time to take on any proper jobs, as she calls them, that all her clients have moved on. It would mean starting over.
‘Maybe it’s time to try your hand at something else?’
‘Maybe. But what? Teaching?’ she frowns like Maia frowned at the mention of her carrots. ‘No thanks.’
She lifts the saucer with the last remaining biscuit on it and offers it to me.
‘You can’t let me eat the last one, Billy. Please – I’ll have eaten all of them if you don’t at least have one.’
My stomach contracts just at the thought of it. That’s one thing that hasn’t been loosened by my spine.
‘Just because I’m not having it doesn’t mean you have to.’
‘Pah,’ she says, shoving it into her mouth. ‘You know nothing.’
We sit on in comfortable silence after that until the sound of Paco crying in a nearby room brings the relaxed part of our conversation to an end. She has other work to do besides this.
She takes my empty mug from me and puts it alongside her own on the tray, then she gathers up my hands in hers and says, ‘I’m going to give it to you straight, Billy. If you don’t start dialling down the loony stuff, you’re going to find yourself back in that place again. You don’t want all that, do you? And presumably it’s not ideal for work either?’
I shake my head.
‘Well, in that case you need to start doing whatever it is you’re not doing. Do you have the right medication?’
I probably seem a little disheartened at the turn things are taking. She says, ‘I’m sorry to have to pry into your business but Mum’s serious about this. She spoke to me after lunch. She said they’re going to get Dr Whatsisname –’
‘Bundt.’ I remember him now, or parts of him – his office, his polo neck under his jacket, his habit of saying Mm when other people are talking.
‘Bundt,’ she repeats, ‘that’s him. Mum says they’re going to get him to hospitalise you again, unless you can manage to get your act together. It’s too much for them to cope with – you see that, don’t you? It scares her, Billy. She’ll convince herself that you’re suicidal or something – you know what she’s like. And Dad isn’t going to get in the middle of it – you know what he’s like.’ All I know is the photos
I’ve seen, and the certainty when looking at them that he loves me. Loves Will, I mean. ‘She just needs to see that you’re on top of things – that’s all it is.’
She gives my hands a little shake. ‘You can do it, I know you can. You just take things a bit too seriously sometimes – but you can get a handle on that. That’s what the pills are there for. I know it’s not brilliant taking them, I’m not saying that, but they’re all there is at the moment, and it’s better than letting yourself get really bad again. You have to help yourself, Billy.’
I smile feebly. ‘I know.’
What can I say? Dozens of languages at my command, all of them teeming with words and images, and yet no way to explain myself. Not even to this willing ear.
‘Tell you what,’ she says, ‘why don’t we go out for a walk? Mum and Maia will be back soon, then Dad, and then we’ll be into the kids’ meal times and … Let’s just say this might be the last chance we get to have a quiet chat, just the two of us. We could collect some things for church tomorrow, like when we were kids.’
I like the sound of that.
‘I’ll go and grab Paco – he can come with us in the pushchair.’
I like the sound of that too. I want to savour every moment in the bosom of this family. I don’t have long, I’m guessing a day or two, before Abaddon’s hounds catch my scent. I have no intention of running from them – what would be the point? They cannot be outrun. But just for now, just for today, I will allow myself to forget about all of that. I will crawl into the nest of this man’s life and take every morsel of love that I’m being given, even if it is meant for another. This is my reward, scant as it is. Tomorrow I will slip away and face my fate.
Outside, a thick fog has descended. It has swallowed the lane that leads into the village. There is no sound from the unseen fields and the wood beyond them. We walk through the dripping silence as if through a dream – I make a comment along these lines but clearly it’s the wrong thing to say.
‘It isn’t a dream, though, Billy. This is reality. You need to start focusing on what’s real. Use that big brain of yours.’
‘I know,’ I say again. But it sounds a little weak this time, so I add, ‘Your old men dream dreams, your young men see visions.’ She’s looking at me like it’s just some more random nonsense. ‘As it says in the bible,’ I tell her, by way of explanation.
She has stopped pushing Paco. She reaches up and touches my cheek. Her face is strangely contorted, her neck flushed. She’s crying.
‘What are we going to do with you?’ she says.
I give her a hug and tell her I’m sorry.
‘I’m the one who should be sorry,’ she weeps into my shoulder – the second person to do that today. ‘I’m asking too much. You can’t just turn it off – I know that really – I suppose I thought that … I don’t know what I thought.’ She pulls back to look up at me. ‘Maybe you do need a rest. Some time to get yourself right again.’
‘Yes,’ I tell her, because it makes no difference what either one of us says. ‘I think I do.’
After that we pick up the pace a bit and go for what Izzy calls a proper walk – she needs to work off those biscuits, she says. The fog begins to lift and we notice that many of the hedgerows we have been passing are thick with damsons or blackberries, perfect for the harvest festival display at the church. Paco shrieks and gurgles with excitement as we return from bending into the bushes with our handfuls of fruit, which we stow in the bottom of his pushchair. He is even allowed to try a blackberry. He mashes it up enthusiastically and lets it dribble down his chin and on to his coat. It gives him a sinister air, I think, like one of those bald devils in a Bosch painting that bites the heads off things. Izzy finds it hilarious, though, and she takes a picture with her phone. I notice she doesn’t invite me to be in it but I can hardly say I blame her. The blood on my face is real.
Speaking of which, the cut on my hand is not healing as well as I’d hoped it would. It’s not really healing at all, in fact, and now that it has been scratched and stung during our hedgerow harvesting it has started to properly hurt.
‘You’d better get Luc to take a look at that too,’ is Izzy’s verdict when I show it to her. ‘It looks infected.’
She has a few scrapes of her own across the backs of her hands and up her wrists, and like mine, her fingers are stained purple from the berries.
‘Worth it, though,’ she says, as we get moving again. ‘It’s one of the biggest dates in the calendar for Dad, believe it or not. It’s still pretty rural around here.’
‘Yes, except it’s … funny … because it’s … not even …’ I’m getting out of breath trying to keep up with her. It’s more of a jog than a walk. Paco loves it, though, his Da-da-da a ringing descant to the hiss of pushchair wheels on damp tarmac.
‘Good God, Billy, when was the last time you did any exercise? You’re like a wheezy old man.’ But she does slow down a little, enough at least to allow me to get my words out.
‘I was going to say, it’s not even a religious holiday.’
‘What do you mean? Of course it is.’
‘No, Izzy, it’s not – it quite clearly has nothing to do with Christianity.’ An aggressive edge has crept into my voice, which I can hear but am unable to stop. ‘It’s just a pagan salute to the seasons. It’s just typical of the church, taking the credit for whatever they can get their claws into. Like it has anything to do with them that crops thrive or fail. They should go back to their celestial spheres and their holy wars.’
I leave it there but she is already clearly shaken by my little outburst. She pretends not to be, though, and what she says next has that deliberately jovial quality you hear people using when they find themselves in the kinds of mildly threatening situations that make them feel silly for being scared. Confronted by a growling dog, say.
‘Okay, smarty pants, technically speaking it’s not a religious festival. I’m just saying it’s still a major bums-on-seats event for Dad. Which is great, right? And it brings people flocking to the church,’ she adds. ‘No pun intended.’
‘It’s not a pun. It’s just where the expression comes from. It’s a metaphor.’
‘Look,’ she stops again, as seems to be her wont when there’s something serious to say. Paco emits a mildly interrogative Da? from beneath the hood of the pushchair. ‘Don’t start getting hostile with me, okay? That’s the one thing I won’t put up with.’
We walk on in silence, the dusk gathering around us.
‘You need to address some of these issues,’ she says as we get close to the lights of home. ‘It’s not enough to just take your pills and go to work and … whatever else it is that you do. You need to confront some of this stuff that is plaguing you.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Oh come on, Billy, we both know what I’m talking about – the religion, the guilt. We both know that’s what set all this off. You felt bad about ditching your religious studies. You felt bad for Dad and,’ she makes an exasperated gesture at everything around us, ‘for God, or whatever.’
We’ve arrived outside the house and she’s unstrapping and hoisting on to her shoulder the sleeping Paco. ‘He’s going to be a nightmare at bedtime now,’ she mutters, momentarily sidetracked.
Then back to me, ‘You need to make your peace with it. That’s all I’m saying. You didn’t go into the church like Dad wanted – but so what?’ She has lowered her voice, not because she doesn’t want to wake Paco, which she’s in fact actively trying to do, jigging him around in her arms, to his evident displeasure, but because she doesn’t want to be overheard. ‘It wasn’t easy for me either, you know, growing up with all the religious stuff ringing in my ears the whole time. As you know,’ she steals a glance at the windows of the house, like she did earlier when she was talking to Will’s mother, ‘I was no angel growing up. I have guilt of my own, by the sackful, but you can’t let it ruin your life, Billy. Do you understand? You have to learn to let go of things.’
&nbs
p; ‘I know.’ And this time I really do. I know it better than anything I’ve ever known.
But she’s no longer looking at me. Her face is turned towards a man walking down the lane towards us, the crisp white band of his collar floating in the gloom.