Sunlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 2)

by Fergus O'Connell

  These crises were a standing joke between them. The soup had boiled over or a button had come loose on her dress or she couldn’t find some item of clothing. Whatever the crisis was, it always came bundled in endless laughter and joking and kidding each other. After they had eaten one or other of them would ask, ‘do you think we should have an early night?’ and that would be the signal for a night of endless lovemaking.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m so tired,’ one of them would joke at breakfast time the next day as she poured coffee. It became another one of the many jokes that they never tired of and always found funny. There came to be a whole set of phrases like this that they used. One Sunday, they had spent the entire morning in bed, and had just heard a church bell sound noon.

  ‘Do you think lunch will be served?’ she asked.

  He had said something about making them a sandwich, but she had slapped him playfully.

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ she said.

  ‘So what is it then?’

  ‘It means – we are going to have some fun today, aren’t we?’

  ‘But we’re having fun,’ he protested.

  ‘Aren’t we?’ he added, pretending to be suddenly worried.

  ‘Ah yes,’ she said, ‘but we need to have even more.’

  And so, one or other of them would often ask the other, ‘do you think lunch will be served?’

  It became a test for when they were invited somewhere. Someone would ask, ‘do you think lunch will be served?’ and if the answer, wasn’t ‘yes’, they would dissolve into laughter and decide to do something else. The something else often involved sex.

  They had sex everywhere. They set out to have sex in every room in her house – and they did. On the kitchen table, on the couch in the drawing room – even in the privy – although it was so small that they ended up convulsed with laughter. One day as they dawdled in bed, she announced that she would like some strawberries – and that if he could find some, she had a very special place he could eat them from. He found some and they did. They did the same when cherries were in season.

  One summer night they went to the theatre, the National on E Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth. They had taken a box. Gilbert couldn’t remember what they saw, just that during the second act, he happened to glance across at Sarah. Often he did this and waited until she became aware of him and smiled back. But tonight, when he looked across at her he saw that her eyes were closed and her lips pressed tightly together. Her chin was raised slightly. He was surprised to see her that engrossed in the play. But then he noticed her right hand. It was pressed down tightly into the light material of her skirt and her index finger was moving to and fro slightly. He saw her breathing had become a bit deeper – he could see her chest rising.

  Next her left hand reached across and grabbed one of his hands, clenching it tightly. She grimaced. Her mouth opened, her lips in an ‘O’ and she exhaled. She eased her grip on his hand but then moved up his arm to grab his wrist. Her grasp was unbelievably tight. Then, panting softly, she opened her eyes. She looked for several moments like she wasn’t quite sure where she was. Then she turned and saw him. She rolled her eyes and then giggled. She looked suddenly exhausted.

  Later when they were leaving, he asked, ‘So did you enjoy the evening, Miss Reynolds?’

  She looked at him, face composed again, eyes demure.

  ‘I did, Mister Owens,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I came.’

  There were days that seemed to go on forever. And even at night, she might wake him and say, ‘let’s go for a midnight feast’. They would go downstairs and cook something – eggs perhaps or some bacon. Then they would eat, sitting opposite each other in the kitchen in candlelight.

  ‘I always wanted to do this when I was a child,’ she explained. ‘But I never got to.’

  After a weekend of being together, she said, ‘didn’t we pack it in?’ and they had.

  ‘What were you like before we met?’ he asked her.

  ‘I was probably a bit wild in my youth but after my marriage and especially my divorce, I became very serious. I was working and not much else. And you?’ she asked.

  ‘The same,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve given me so much,’ she said. ‘You’ve made all my dreams come true.’

  ‘You’ve given me so much,’ he said.

  ‘What have I given you?’ she asked. ‘Apart from plenty of sex?’

  For an instant, he was afraid that they were about to have another incident like the come-back-with-a-better-offer one. But he looked at her face and was reassured by it. And anyway, her tone of voice had been different – not like it had been that night.

  ‘Just the idea that life should be about pleasure and happiness and enjoyment. That you don’t have to be rich to find it. You can find it in simple things. The way we’ve found it in just being together.’

  Then he added, ‘If anything were to happen to me – if I were to die – I hope you would find someone to continue that with.’

  She looked at him and said very firmly, ‘If you were to die, I wouldn’t want to go on living.’

  ‘But it’s not going to happen,’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s not going to happen,’ she said.

  And then, as if she had misunderstood him, she added, ‘I’m going to die first.’

  But then, out of nowhere – literally nowhere – would come the storm. And he would be cursing himself for what he had said or done or was it what he hadn’t said or hadn’t done? Because while he could always pinpoint the moment when it had happened, there was no pattern. She seemed to interpret things in a wildly different way from him. Things he said jokingly or intended harmlessly or hadn’t even thought about, things that seemed so completely innocuous, suddenly brought on raging torrents of fury.

  Once she threw water in his face, so that after that – whenever she got angry – he would move potential weapons or missiles out of the way. Glasses, knives, bottles. On the day she became aware of this, her anger rose to a colossal level that he hadn’t witnessed before. The anger and its aftermath might last hours or could last three or four days. When it looked like it wasn’t going to be resolved straight away – which it sometimes was – he would leave the house and go back to the studio. There would be silence between them for several days. Once, the silence had lasted a month. But sooner or later, one or other of them would make contact.

  He would resolve that that was the end of it, that he couldn’t go on like this, that he would not see her again. Then she would make contact. Equally, sometimes he felt he couldn’t live without her and then he would be the one to break the silence.

  Either way they would meet. He would want to discuss it, to try to understand what had happened so that they could strive together for it not to happen again. But inevitably her response was that there was no point in going over the past. They needed to look to the future now – a new beginning. And of course, the lure was too promising. Maybe it would be a new beginning. Maybe this time. The only acknowledgement he might get that anything had happened was when she sometimes said, ‘Thank you for loving me, Gilbert – even when I’m not lovable.’ And so life resumed and they went on.

  Until the next time.

  19

  ‘Don’t you ever do anything like that again,’ said Gilbert angrily. ‘You could have gotten us killed. That lieutenant spoke Italian. He knew what you were saying.’

  Roberto shrugged. He was still angry and didn’t seem to feel any embarrassment.

  ‘It make me so angry. Why those guys fight?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gilbert. ‘But getting angry isn’t going to fix anything.’

  ‘Just like drinking, boss?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just like drinking ain’t gonna fix anything.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘How’s it different?’

  Gilbert couldn’t think of a suitable answer.

  ‘It just is,’ he muttered.

 
Roberto seemed happy to let the matter rest. But then he said, ‘ey boss, you gotta teach me to swear in English.’

  ‘What?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘You ‘eard me. You gotta teach me to swear in English. I need to know this if I live in America.’

  ‘Oh – kay,’ said Gilbert, hesitantly.

  ‘Okay. That’s right – okay. Is a good word. I like okay.‘

  Roberto said it several times more, making a number of different faces to go with it. He did irritation. ‘Okay!’ He was dismissive. ‘Okay. Okay’. He did impatience. ‘Okay.’ Then, when he seemed happy with all of that, he said. ‘’ow you say bastardos in English?’

  ‘Easy. It’s bastards.’

  Roberto repeated the word with the emphasis on the second syllable. Gilbert corrected him, putting it on the first. They went through several rounds of this until eventually Roberto was happy that he was saying it ‘in the American way’.

  Roberto asked what the worst thing was that you could call somebody. What was the worst thing that you could say about them? About their mother? Gilbert offered various suggestions, sometimes struggling to explain them. Then Roberto repeated them numerous times. First he aimed to get the pronunciation right – ‘in the American way’, as he kept saying. Then, once he had achieved that, he tried it with various degrees of anger and accompanying facial expressions.

  ‘And you ’ave signs, also?’ asked Roberto.

  ‘Signs?’

  ‘Like with your ‘ands?’

  ‘No, not really. Not too many,’ said Gilbert. ‘I think you Europeans tend to do that more than we Americans.’

  Roberto seemed satisfied with this.

  ‘Okay, boss,’ he said. ‘Now I teach you one in Italian. Is a long one but it cover pretty much everything. You ready?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Listen carefully now. Is a long one,’ said Roberto. ‘Vaffanculo a lei, la sua moglie, e’ la sua madre. Lei e’ un cafone stronzo. Lo non mangio in questo merdaio! Vada via in culo!’

  Roberto shouted the insults, face red and waving his arms as he did so. Then he turned to Gilbert, smiled and said, ‘We do it slowly.’

  Roberto coaxed him gently through the four sentences until Gilbert had them word perfect.

  ‘Is a really good one boss, because you know when it ‘appens ’ow you are shouting at them and they are shouting at you?’

  Gilbert said that he did. Images of Sarah that he preferred not to think about came into his head.

  ‘Well, it means that – ’ow, you say it,’ said Roberto. ‘You can keep up the flow.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘It means – I don’ know ’ow good is my English but I try. It means you, sir, go fuck yourself – an’ your wife an’ your mother. You are a common turd! I not eat in this shithouse. Fuck you!’

  Gilbert’s eyes widened.

  ‘Well, as you say,’ he said, impressed despite himself, ‘that pretty much covers everything. And everybody.’

  ‘Yeah, is a good one, boss. ’ow about I now teach you some signs that you can make with the ‘ands?’

  ‘Maybe we’ve done enough for today,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Okay, boss.’

  They lapsed into silence but Gilbert continued to recite ‘Vaffanculo a lei, la sua moglie …’ to himself.

  ‘That’s good, boss. You practice,’ said Roberto.

  There was another long silence in which Gilbert sensed that Roberto was itching to speak. Finally, the Italian said, ‘Anyway boss, ’ow you feeling now?’

  He tapped the side of his head.

  ‘Up ‘ere, I mean.’

  Gilbert took a long time to reply.

  ‘It’s hard to describe. I just feel empty. Like nothing is ever going to matter again. Let’s say we get these pictures and we get back and we put on an exhibition. Say it’s a big success and we make lots of money. I stop drinking and it’s a whole new chapter of my life starting up. It’s like I don’t care. I feel that the best part of my life is over and that I’ll never enjoy again anything like the happiness I enjoyed when I was married to Sarah.’

  ‘I wish there was something I could say to make you feel better, boss.’

  Gilbert touched Roberto’s forearm for a moment.

  ‘Thanks. You’re a good man, Roberto.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Roberto, happily. ’is the first time you get my name right.’

  Towards late afternoon, they had climbed a long, gentle hill that ran up to the top of a low ridge. When they crested the ridge they saw that the road ran down and off through a wide, flat plain. They had just begun to discuss where they should stop for the night when Roberto pointed and said, ‘Look!’

  Up ahead, maybe nearly a mile away, were some figures. Some – there looked to be about seven or eight of them – were on foot, walking in a ragged column. They were accompanied by two men on horseback, one in front and one bringing up the rear. Gilbert found it difficult to see the men in any detail because the westering sun was over on his left. Suddenly however, it slipped behind a cloud and the golden haze that had momentarily covered the ground was extinguished. Gilbert strained to see the men. Then he heard Roberto say, ‘They’re black men’. At the same moment Gilbert said, ‘And those are Confederate soldiers.’

  ‘Stop the wagon. Stop the wagon,’ said Gilbert, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

  ‘No point, boss,’ said Roberto as the wagon continued to trundle along. ‘They’ve seen us.’

  And sure enough just as Roberto said the words, the man at the rear turned round and they saw a white face.

  ‘Slave catchers,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘What’s that, boss? What you mean?’

  ‘They may be soldiers – but they’re probably deserters. Instead of fighting they round up black men and take them back to the South to sell them.’

  ‘You mean they round up slaves?’

  ‘No, these black men were probably free. They were probably escaped slaves who came north.’

  ‘And now these guys gonna make ’em slaves again.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Jesus Christ and ‘oly Mary,’ said Roberto. Then, for good measure, he added, ‘Sons of whores.’

  ‘Hey, don’t start that again. Those guys we met before – they were soldiers. In the army. Subject to some kind of discipline. There was an officer with them. These guys …’

  Gilbert’s sentence trailed off. Then he said, ‘Maybe we should turn back.’

  ‘We gotta keep going, boss. This is the quickest way to Gettysburg.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ groaned Gilbert. ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’

  Roberto click clicked Leonardo and he speeded up slightly. The group of men continued to trudge along and the wagon closed the distance quickly. Suddenly, Roberto exploded.

  ‘Those pieces of shit!’ he said in English.

  ‘What?’ said Gilbert. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Boss, boss, can’t you see?’

  And before Roberto could say any more, Gilbert did see. One of what he had taken to be black men wore a pale colored dress.

  ‘It’s a woman, boss. Fuck their mothers! Sons of whores!’

  ‘Will you stop that?’ said Gilbert.

  In all there were eight blacks. A rope ran from the horn of the saddle of the rear rider and was looped around each of their necks. The rope continued on to the front rider. While the two riders clearly wore Confederate gray, they were not in complete uniforms. The one at the rear had a gray jacket, blue Union trousers and a gray hat. The other wore a butternut jacket, gray trousers and a gray kepi-style cap.

  ‘We’ll just say howdy and go past,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Boss, this is terrible. We gotta do something.’

  ‘What can we do? There are two armed men up there.’

  ‘We shoulda kept those guns,’ said Roberto.

  ‘Oh great, a shootout with trained soldiers – that’s a really great idea.
Now please, you just keep your mouth shut and let’s see if we can get through this. Can’t this horse go any faster?’

  Roberto flicked the reins along Leonardo’s back but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The gap was now just a couple of hundred yards away.

  ‘Maybe they’ll just let us go past,’ Gilbert said under his breath, more like a prayer than anything else.

  The Confederates reined in their horses and the party of slaves shuffled to a halt. Both riders turned their mounts in the direction of the approaching wagon. The nearer one said something to the other but Gilbert missed what it was. The other smiled and unslung a musket which he rested across his lap. The wagon was now only a few yards away from the rear rider.

  ‘Afternoon, gentlemen,’ said Gilbert, tipping his hat.

  Leonardo trotted along happily.

  ‘Whoa, whoa there,’ said the nearer man. ‘You boys sure are in a helluva rush this afternoon. Just pull in there now, boys, pull in.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ muttered Gilbert.

  ‘Bastardos,’ hissed Roberto.

  They did as they were told and Leonardo came to a stop right opposite the second rider.

  They were perhaps the two most humorless men Gilbert had ever seen. The one who had been bringing up the rear and who had told them to stop had the face of a torturer. He was fat with dead eyes and Gilbert had a brief picture of him in a leather apron operating a rack or pressing a red-hot branding iron onto skin. The other was younger – pale and unhealthy looking with a sour expression. Gilbert thought he didn’t look all that bright. The torturer and the village idiot. A bad combination. Gilbert noticed that they both had whips on their saddles.

  The negroes seemed relieved that they had stopped. If they had harbored any hopes that this was to be their moment of rescue then those had gone. Instead they were looking somewhat curious as to what might happen next. The negro woman was in a wretched state. She looked exhausted and beyond hope. There was a huge blue swelling around one of her eyes and her cheeks were streaked with dusty stripes where she had been crying.