Later it would have to be; she apparently had totally other plans for now. Like one hand on the back of my neck to hold me, one on my cheek to guide me, and just that little hint of stretching up to kiss me.
o0o
Okay, we’d kissed before, and more; we’d danced in the dark fantastic. I used to think—back when I was a kid, ten or eleven, when my older cousins had done their familial duty and enlightened me a laughing little about some interesting few of the facts of life—I used to think that kissing was an essential part of the act of love, that you couldn’t actually do one without the other: that you had to be kissing while you bonked. I remember a long dispute I had with Jamie about it. He’d got hooked on another aspect entirely and maintained that doggy-style was the only sensible, maybe the only possible way the wondrous but peculiar thing could be achieved, on account of the absolute necessity of keeping one’s hands on the girl’s breasts throughout. I of course insisted that what he proposed was simply out of the question, because her mouth would be in the pillow; we fought like Lilliputians, Big-Enders versus Little-Enders, for weeks before a raid on his brother’s room produced magazines and The Joy of Sex to prove us both wrong. Gobsmacked we were after that, the pair of us. I can’t speak for him but my own night-time fantasies took some very bewildering turns for a while, before individual investments in our own picture-libraries and judicious swapping of material settled things down for the traditional long wait, the certainties of pubescent and impatient boys who have yet to discover how anything really feels or happens or results.
Janice and I had kissed but only fleetingly, en passant, in pursuit of something greater. Just now, kissing was all there was; we weren’t going to tug each other’s clothes off and do the whole show right there, make the beast with two backs on the dusty lantern floor. At least I wasn’t, and this time I was determined not to be overruled. No lock on the door, and too much chance of someone else pattering up the steps with drinks or news or questions. God, just think if it were Laura...
So we kissed, with no physical goal beyond the kissing. That made it slow and deep and patient, exploratory, promissory, revelatory. Her tobacco tongue posed questions; mine proposed answers, which she seemed to find acceptable. I wondered if she tasted tobacco also, but I thought probably not. Her taste-buds would be numb or inured to it, or her brain would tune it out. She probably just tasted me, or a version of me: like colours seen through coloured shades, some skewed untrue but most clinging hard to what they were.
o0o
We kissed, and at last we stopped kissing. Stopped at that level, at least, when lockjaw threatened. Fell back on whisper-kisses, soft touches, teasing nibbles; and she murmured, “Still want to know why you don’t hate Jamie, then?”
“Go on, then. Tell us.”
“Later...”
o0o
As it happened, it was Laura who came next up the stairs. Climbing for two: climbing for curiosity mainly, I thought, checking out Jamie’s report for accuracy or us for staying-power. Luckily, by the time she got so far, we had exhausted all the obvious possibilities of kissing in isolation, and I was still being firm—not to say rigid—about breaking that quarantine. It was kissing or nothing, and at last the kissing had had to stop. I was down on the ground again, she’d got me that far, sitting wedged once more like an angle iron between floor and wall; Janice was no longer kneeling athwart me, straddling my hips, her folded arms a pillow for my head and all her body there within my ambit and accessible, brutally tempting in defiance of my resolution...
She’d moved from there to sit side by side with me, shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin; but then a sudden post-noncoital hunger had sent her crawling over to where she’d left her cigarettes, and when she’d come back she’d settled a couple of feet away, consideration for the non-smoker or some other motive keeping her just at hand-holding distance.
Which is what we were doing when Laura came in, we were holding hands, our fingers loosely, passively interlinked, no intent in the world.
So quite why I scrambled so hastily, so awkwardly, so blushingly, so guiltily to my feet is not a question I care to think about overmuch, even now. It’s prone to have me doing my madness-in-public act: kicking at the air, muttering, shaking my head hard, anything to dislodge the memory and stop me dwelling there.
At the time I just babbled inside my furious skin, all too aware that I had amused and superior female eyes watching me from both sides, though I was trying to twist away from all of them, talking to the windows, to the walls, to the foetus: “Laura, hi, what are you doing, all the way up here, should you be doing that stuff with, with the, you know, the baby coming?”
“It’s not coming yet, Ben. Exercise is good for me. Good for us both. Actually, I thought maybe you’d both appreciate a pee-break?”
Actually, she was right. The moment she’d said it, I was bursting. I glanced at Janice; my first reaction was on the tip of my tongue already, I’ll go first, okay? You stay, talk to Laura, and was blocked only by the sudden panicked thought that maybe I really didn’t want her talking to Laura, not just now, not with that wicked smiling light in her eyes.
Didn’t matter anyway what I wanted, what I might or might not have suggested. Janice held out both her hands towards me, help me up; I gripped her wrists and pulled unhurriedly, she swayed to her feet and swapped our hands around somehow so that it was she holding me, tugging me gently towards the door, saying, “Thanks, Laura, you’re a pet. Won’t be long...”
And then there were the steps down, and her hand on the back of my neck, scratching, not lightly; and her saying, “You know your trouble, Ben lad? You don’t think, you just panic all the time, do what you always have done, run in circles with a wing trailing...”
Oh, was that my trouble, was it? Right now I thought my trouble was beside me, raising welts; or above me, doing sentry-go more dutifully than we had and still giggling the while, no doubt about that. Or both, a man can have more trouble than one. Born to it, but I did think that this was more than my inheritance as the steps led us downward.
o0o
Halfway down, we encountered Jamie coming up, and received a severe change of plan.
He had cans of Coke in one hand, chocolate bars in the other. “Don’t hurry back,” he said. “Sorry, but I’ve had all I can take of the wet relatives. And it’s our turn up there, I reckon.”
Not for the duty, he meant, for the privacy: for kissing in isolation, or doing whatever more their greater nerve could encompass. Or their greater need, perhaps. They had so much more to lose than I did, if either one of them lost the other, which both must have been certain of last night. For sure they deserved some time alone.
Who knows, maybe an objective voice would say that I deserved or even needed a little of what I got in the café, in Jamie’s place. Janice wouldn’t, but she was no more objective than I was.
We went out of the lighthouse and around its curving bulk, following a brick-laid footpath; came to the little house behind and paused to tut disingenuously at the broken door, where someone—probably Jamie, though it might have been Serena—had forced the lock, with a lump of rock by the battered look of it.
Just inside were the toilets, where we both got what we really did urgently need, a comfort-break, a long and steaming piss. I was out first, and waited for her; then we went on through another door into the café proper.
My female cousins were grouped, almost huddled together by a window, keeping watch over the grey sea more diligently than we had from our far better vantage. Feeling abandoned by the nervy look of them, by the eager way they jumped up to welcome us, or rather me.
“Benedict! ... Ben, come and sit down, sit here... Would you like a coffee? Christa, fetch Ben a coffee. How do you like it? Black, Chrissie, and some biscuits too...”
Oh, it was strange, it was rare to be greeted so effusively by my family, to whom I had only ever been first an adjunct and then a misfit, always something less than I should have been, a weakl
ing and a failure in a tribe that had no time for either.
Briefly, I enjoyed it. Milked it, even. Took the seat they beckoned me towards, and left Janice to drag up another for herself; nibbled a biscuit, sipped a coffee, basked a little in the general relief my womenfolk were showing, simply to have me with them.
The unaccustomed pleasure paled quickly, though. Not quickly enough for sceptical Janice, who’d had to fetch her own coffee also and radiated a silent but scathing discontent at my side, which I felt sure would find lyrical expression later; but I guess I’m not cut out for adulation, especially when it’s cut by that same wariness that Christa had shown earlier, that borders on simple fear.
It made me uncomfortable, restless under their eyes. Janice actually broke first, lost all patience with their tongue-tied gladness, their relief; but when she stirred beside me, when she thrust herself to her feet and said, “There’s nothing doing here. I’m going for a walk,” it was the work of a moment to follow.
“Hang on, Jan, I’ll come with you.”
She checked, and seemed on the verge of saying no, of saying, “No, I don’t want you,” which would have been a hard thing to handle for more reasons than the one. She only shrugged, though, pushed her way through the door and left me to catch it on the rebound.
Behind me I could hear soft moans of disappointment, of returning anxiety, he’s our shield and defender and he’s leaving us, but I thought they could live with the disappointment. They didn’t really need me, they only thought they did.
o0o
I was expecting excoriation from Janice, but again I thought I’d live through it, if uncomfortably.
In fact, after she’d stormed and scrabbled her way down the hill—straight down, not troubling to follow the road around—with me trailing puppy-style in her wake, she stopped and waited for me, breathing hard; and when I reached her she slipped her arm through mine and said, “Never mind, eh? I was adored once, too.”
I shook my head, wanting to say no, it wasn’t that, it was only that they felt safe with me there and scared without, and fussing was the only way they knew to say so. But I didn’t have much spare breath myself, it had been a steep and tricky scramble; and by the time my lungs had caught up with me my brain was way ahead and wondering, thinking that she wasn’t just talking about the girls in the café. And before I could work my way up to asking her—how do you mean, what are you saying here, something about Laura and me?—she was tugging on my elbow, wanting to be moving again.
I glanced around to get my bearings, then said, “No, this way. I’ll show you something, a special place of ours.”
o0o
I took her round the ragged rock that we called Greenbeard, to the smooth-worn boulder where Jamie and I had always liked to sit and talk and watch the sea, where we’d brought fish and chips and griefs just days before, where I’d never brought and never thought to bring anyone else.
This was the far side from the causeway, where the Island’s rocky flanks plunged into unplumbed depths of churning water. Unplumbed by us, at least; drop pebbles and kraken-waking chunks of stone into it as we could, as we did, as we had all our lives, we’d still never heard an echo coming up from when they settled on the sea-bed.
“They’ll not be coming now,” Janice said, scanning the bare horizon. Then, “Will they?” with a touch of uncertainty.
“No.” Not with the sun already westering somewhere behind us, below the peak of the Island already, casting its shadow out across the sea. Not time enough left for a game of hide-and-seek through the attractions, even if they’d worked themselves up to face me again after my little touch of temper at the causeway. Come nightfall, there’d be Jamie, and for all they knew there’d be all the family massing on the shore. They wouldn’t come now. “I didn’t bring us here to watch.”
“What, then?”
“Just to sit, I guess,” I said, and did; and so did she beside me, grunting with pleased surprise when she found the boulder still warm beneath us.
Only I couldn’t sit here without talking, without being serious. Even without Jamie, the habit was too ingrained. “You know,” I said slowly, watching how the spray flung up beneath our feet, “I used to think...”
“Did you? So why did you stop, then, too much strain on the old brain cell, was it?”
I just looked at her. She grinned, hugged herself against my arm, said, “No, go on, then. What did you use to think?”
I used to think that I was born to run, that this wide horizon was a fence made to close me out, to keep me from ever coming home; but I was back now and I was looking at her, and the second of those two states was the greater surprise. I felt suddenly that I owed her something, more than I actually had it in my gift to bestow; so I did what I could, I gave her what I had, I lied to her.
“I used to think I’d bring Laura here,” I said, though in fact I’d never got that far. I’d learned too soon that Laura would never grant me that right, to bring her to my special places.
“Uh-huh,” she said, and her grin had a wholly different quality now. “Starting to figure it out now, are you?”
“What?”
“Why you don’t hate Jamie, fool.”
Twelve: Transfigured Light
A bit before dusk, we made our way back to the road, and so up the hill to the lighthouse. Before the light fails, I’d said, meaning it two different ways. I didn’t fancy that scramble over weed-wet rocks in the crepuscule; and my shift was over anyway, my time was passing, I had to hand the baton on to Jamie.
Which I did with a flourish, albeit only verbal.
He and Laura were already down from their vigil, whatever they’d actually been doing up there. One day, I thought, I might ask, see if they really were bolder than I was. We found them in the café, sipping coffee, seemingly undisturbed by the ongoing anxieties around them. The cousins were at the windows still, watching the sun, silently urging it on down; after my abandonment, they were obviously desperate for the dark, to be under his protective aegis.
I detached my hand from Jan’s, purely to clap it loudly onto his shoulder. Never mind that Jan instantly put her arm round my waist instead, and never mind that Laura smiled privately at the sight of that. I had my own pleasure to exact.
“Sun’s going,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, though I knew damn well that everyone was well aware already. “It’s your turn now.”
“To do what?” he demanded.
“Get us off, of course.”
“Yeah, right. How do I do that?”
“Well, first,” I said cheerfully, having it all planned out in my head, “you let the family know where we are.”
“How, Ben? We don’t have the phone any more. They took it off Laura at the station. This one’s dead,” with a jerk of his head towards the payphone in the corner of the café. “Either they’ve cut the lines or you did, when you ripped up the causeway.”
“Yeah, I’d expected that. But it’s okay,” it was all part of the plan. “You just set a beacon, something the family can’t miss. They’ll come. Then we’ll know it’s safe to cross back. No one’s going to be watching for us with a rifle after a fleet of Macallans turns up.”
“Unh.” He thought about that for a moment, nodded slowly, then went on, just as I’d hoped. “But how do we get across? They’re not going to turn up in boats.”
“Don’t need them to. We’ll walk. I’ll show you. But we need the beacon first, soon as it gets dark enough...”
o0o
I was teasing and mysterious, he grumbled and glared at me; but he came outside, with all the others following. To the east the sky was fading to purple, and the moon was up as though she knew we’d need her. I grinned contentedly, and pointed at the black bulk of the lighthouse like a finger shadowed against the falling sun.
“Beacon,” I said. “That’s what it’s for, right?”
“Right...”
There was respect in Jamie’s acknowledgement, as well as confusion and
some irritation. Just the combination I’d been working for. Sheer ego, but I wanted to show my clever cousin, all my cousins just who was still in charge here, even after my light was gone.
We waited, not for long and I at least was not impatient at the waiting; the sunset was gorgeous and I enjoyed every moment of it, leaning on Jan’s shoulder and talking quietly about the colours, about other sunsets I’d seen on my travels, high in the mountains or down on the coast. I didn’t get much back from her but grunts and frowns, but that was okay. I was riding shamefully high on my own self-satisfaction, and refusing to be ashamed about it.
At last the sun was gone, we were left only the moon and stars to play with, no trace of a tingle on my skin except when I touched Jamie’s. I touched him, and he turned his eyes up towards the lantern of the lighthouse, dead these many years but due to live again tonight, though it would die a lasting death in the process. More obedient than inspired, Jamie reached out with his talent, and set the lantern suddenly ablaze with nightfire.
Cold blue light, flickering and flaming, guttering in no wind that we could feel; we had stark shifting shadows at our feet now, and it was easy to see the path down to the road below. All part of the plan.
“Let’s go down to the causeway,” I suggested, knowing that my suggestions were orders tonight. “By the time we get there, something may be happening.”
o0o
What was due to happen duly did. There were plenty of houses along the coast here, plenty of people to see the light; some if not most would know what it was, what it portended; one at least was sure to have a contact in the family, sure to let them know. The Macallans have few friends, but who needs friends when the bulk of your enemies are cowed and subservient?
We took our time, going the long, slow way all around the Island for reasons of comfort and safety, for a total lack of hurry now. We watched and worried over each other’s footing at the top, where the path might be clear to see in the ice-blue light but jumping shadows made every step uncertain; Jamie took the steepest section backwards, risking a fall himself to hold Laura’s hands and guide her feet directly. Jan and I, we linked tight together and took it side by side, risking each other, both for one and one for both and “stop giggling, girl, we’ll slip...!”
Light Errant Page 25