‘You must tell me about it when you do,’ she said. ‘When you make love for the first time, I mean. I want to know what you think.’
He glanced away from her, out of the window. An ice-cream parlour, a man with a dog, a tree. How was he going to get out of shopping next week?
‘It’s so wonderful, it’s like,’ and she left her mouth open while she thought, and then it came to her, and she smiled, ‘it’s like colours everywhere.’
Colours everywhere?
‘I want to know if you see those colours too.’ She was looking at him again. She seemed to have been looking at him practically the whole time. He couldn’t understand why they hadn’t crashed yet, why they weren’t wrapped round a tree or a streetlight, why they weren’t, in fact, dead.
Still smiling, Harriet parked the car. She knew she’d embarrassed him. She even seemed to have enjoyed it. He’d thought she was prying at the time, and resented it. But now he saw her questions in a different light. Maybe she’d just been excited that morning, and her excitement had spilled over. Maybe she’d just seen those colours everywhere for the first time. Maybe it’d happened the night before.
He looked across at Dad.
‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ Dad said. ‘Not until I was sure.’
‘I never realised.’
‘You wouldn’t have. We were careful. And anyway, you were hardly here.’
‘What do you mean, you were careful?’
‘We took,’ and suddenly Dad looked furtive, almost guilty, ‘special precautions.’
‘What kind of precautions?’
‘We had a piece of string.’ Dad explained how he had run the string from under his pillow, across his bedroom, out of his window, along the back wall of the house (where it was lost among the branches of a lilac bush) and in through Harriet’s window, ending in a loop that Harriet slipped over her big toe when she went to bed at night. They always waited until Nathan was either out or asleep, then Dad tugged on the string, and Harriet tiptoed across the landing and into his bed.
Dad unlocked his desk and took out a ball of strong brown string. ‘There, that’s it.’ Just looking at the string reminded him of too much. His eyes moved beyond it, out of focus.
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to ask her to come back and marry me.’
But he was more than twice Harriet’s age, as Harriet’s family pointed out, through Harriet, in her first letter. He wrote back, asking her whether she loved him. Of course she loved him, she said, but she had to think. He said that if she loved him there was nothing to think about. He told her he was going to drive into town and find a piece of string that was six thousand miles long, a piece of string that would reach right across the ocean, from his sad finger to her beautiful big toe. She wrote back saying how much she liked his last letter. She hoped he could find a piece of string like that. But then she said, ‘Maybe we need rope now,’ which only depressed him.
Towards the end of the summer he began to founder. He was still writing almost every day, but she was writing less. He felt a pain in his right hand that was caused, he said, by the great weight of his love passing from his heart into his pen. He also suspected that it might be arthritis. And then, a few days before his forty-ninth birthday, he received a letter, her first for over a week. She said she had a birthday surprise for him. She was coming back to marry him. He turned pale and almost fainted. Nathan had to reach up under his shirt with a towel and mop the cold sweat off his back.
Three weeks later, the marriage took place. Standing on the steps of City Hall for the wedding photographs in her navy-blue suit and her sheer black stockings, Harriet achieved a temporary sophistication. Dad stood beside her. He looked both proud and guilty of something. As if happiness was a reward and he wasn’t sure he’d done enough to deserve it. After the ceremony they celebrated with lunch at the revolving restaurant on Sunset Tower. Forty-two floors up, a 360-degree view. One of the most exclusive restaurants in the city. Harriet ordered a bottle of champagne and four glasses.
‘I don’t think Georgia should –’ Dad began.
Georgia, nine years old, took out her sulking face.
‘Oh, but Jack,’ Harriet cried, the fingertips of one hand touching his lips, to silence him, ‘it’s a special day.’
‘Well,’ Dad said, ‘I suppose so.’
Georgia beamed and swallowed half the contents of the glass in a single gulp.
‘That’s all you’re getting, Georgia,’ Dad warned, ‘so make it last.’
And Harriet glanced at Nathan, a quick glance, the light in her eyes rocking like buoys in the harbour at night, she was recognising, even gently mocking, her husband’s sense of caution, caution on a day that was such a gamble for him. I’ve thrown it to the winds, her glance seemed to be saying, but look at him. Suddenly he felt as if the marriage was a confidence trick, a joke on someone; he felt as if he was being drawn into some kind of conspiracy. He shifted on his chair and looked away.
He remembered Yvonne’s reaction to news of the forthcoming wedding. She’d heard Dad out, then she’d sat back, her eyes focused on the top corner of the room, a cheroot rolling, unlit, between her fingers. ‘Just so long as you realise that she’ll want to change everything,’ she’d said. It was the first time that Dad had seemed worried since the arrival of Harriet’s letter. What he looked for in love, what he hoped to extract, was not change but stability.
Nathan let his eyes drift back to the table again. He watched Harriet carefully as, laughing now, she tilted her face towards a waiter. She wasn’t beautiful, he decided, that wasn’t it, but she seemed to give something off that, like a perfume, excited those around her. The waiters were attentive to the point of subservience. Especially the one with the black hair on the back of his hands, the Italian-looking one, ‘The kind of man,’ Dad whispered, ‘who makes you feel like washing.’
‘Like washing?’ Harriet didn’t follow.
‘Didn’t you see?’ Dad’s voice dropped again and they had to lean forwards to hear. ‘You could clean shoes with the back of those hands.’
Nathan and Georgia doubled up, but Harriet didn’t think it was funny. As for Dad, he’d have preferred not to have had to make the joke in the first place. He’d have preferred less conscientious service. He was the kind of man who was jealous of waiters.
He salvaged the situation by saying, ‘Did any of you hear the one about the string?’ and soon they were all laughing about the same thing, which was a far better way for a new family to start its life together.
Georgia drank a surreptitious glass of champagne, her second, and began to run round the restaurant with a wide, fixed grin on her face, her arms extended like the wings of a plane. They tried to persuade her to land, but she wouldn’t listen, she just went on running, round and round. Just before coffee was served, she threw up on Harriet’s new shoes.
‘My shoes,’ Harriet cried, and a flock of waiters swooped with paper napkins.
Dad mopped Georgia’s mouth. ‘I told you, George,’ he said, ‘but you wouldn’t listen, would you?’ Though, actually, he was talking to Harriet.
Georgia grinned out of her green face. ‘I was sick,’ she said. ‘Sick, sick, sick.’
‘She’s still drunk,’ Nathan said. ‘Don’t you think we’d better take her home?’
It was shortly after the wedding that he ran into Tip again. The summer holidays had just begun, and he was due back on the beach for his second season as a lifeguard. He was riding the bus down Central Avenue one morning when he saw Tip slouching in a doorway. It was only a split-second, and the windows were tinted green and bleary with diesel, but he was sure. The narrow eyes, the broad sloping shoulders. That white skin, hard as lard. He jumped off the bus at the next stop and ran back.
‘Tip,’ he said, and when Tip turned round his eyes were shut to slits against the morning glare, you’d have needed a knife to prise them open.
Nathan hadn’t seen him for a couple of m
onths and he couldn’t believe the transformation. There were shadows the colour of musselshells both above and below his eyes. He wore a grey suit that was two or three sizes too big for him. It was a typical thrift-shop suit, it smelt of mothballs and piss, it smelt of death, which was probably its history.
‘Christ,’ Tip said. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘I saw you from the bus.’
Tip flicked at a scrap of paper with his shoe. The sole was coming away. The shoe seemed to be grinning. ‘So what’s up?’
‘Nothing much. I’m just going to the beach. You coming?’
Tip shook his head. ‘Don’t reckon so.’
‘How come?’
Tip shrugged. ‘Just don’t feel like it.’
‘They’ll miss you, Tip. They’ll want to know why.’
‘Tell them I’m sick.’ Tip looked away into the street. His narrow eyes followed cars as they passed.
‘Look, Tip,’ Nathan said, ‘you’re not doing anything. Why don’t you just come with me?’
Tip stiffened. ‘I’ve got to be going.’ He was looking past Nathan at something. Nathan turned round. Jed was standing right behind him.
Jed wore a cheap leather jacket with round lapels. The sun snagged on his crooked skin. Thumbs in his belt and eyes flickering behind those hostile spectacles.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘It’s Mr fucking Universe.’
Nathan just looked at him.
Jed held out a soiled bag. ‘Like one?’
‘What are they?’
‘Sugar Babies.’ Jed smirked. ‘Just about the sweetest thing there is.’
Nathan shook his head.
Jed rattled the bag under Nathan’s nose, then he spoke to Tip. ‘I’ve got it. Let’s split.’
Tip slowly detached himself from the wall. It was like watching a bandage being peeled off a wound.
‘Good to see you, Tip,’ Nathan said.
‘You want to see us again,’ Jed said, ‘we live in the Towers of Remembrance. You probably heard of it. Why don’t you drop in sometime?’
As they walked away, Nathan saw Jed say something to Tip and then tilt his head back and cackle. He had a pretty good idea what Tip had been waiting for, what Jed had brought. Somebody waiting in a doorway on Central Avenue, it wasn’t hard to figure out what they were waiting for.
He was sweeping the clubhouse later that day when the captain walked in. He told the captain that Tip was sick.
The captain gave him a sharp look. ‘He knows the rules. He gets sick too much, he gets thrown out of the Club.’
Nathan swam out to the buoys, about a hundred yards offshore. The sky was yellow that afternoon, the sea heavy and grey. He watched the solid waves curl away from him and slam against the land. Looking east he could see four towers rising and falling in the distance, the Towers of Remembrance, and he knew Tip was going under, Tip was drowning.
Two weeks passed and Tip didn’t show once. Nathan had the dream about the jets agan, only this time it was Tip’s hand that he was holding. The next day, after he left the beach, he caught the bus to Mangrove East. It was a long ride through all the bad sections. He picked at his fingers, and didn’t look at anyone. Slowly the bus emptied out. He’d only been saving lives for a few months, and wondered if he knew enough.
He was dropped under a streetlamp, the only person left on the bus. A patch of mauled light. Gritty sidewalk, scarred with a million cigarette burns. Weeds and spit and oil. Place like this, the only glitter was the knife just before it sank in. Place like this, there wasn’t any gold. He moved quickly, head just ahead of his feet, feet in the shadows. Left down one street, right on the next, left down another, then he could smell the sea. He turned into Ocean Boulevard. Dented cars, flop motels, the Lucky Dip bar. Cars with no aerials, no hubcaps. Neon signs with half their letters missing. People disappeared here too.
The Towers of Remembrance stood back from the road, in a stretch of land that was paved, like a parking-lot, and lit by random floodlights. There were four grim towers set in a loose cross-shaped arrangement and linked by concrete walkways. They used to be cemeteries, high-rise cemeteries, but they’d been derelict for years. To the north and east there were housing projects. To the south, a road that led nowhere and, beyond that, the ocean.
He crossed the asphalt and passed under a walkway. Wind moaned in the passages, stirring bitter smells of urine and fish. He stood in the central area, a kind of concrete garden. A few stone benches, a fountain sprayed with first names, declarations of love, four-letter words. This would once have been a place for contemplation. He looked up at the towers surrounding him. Many of the dead bodies had been removed. Their places had been taken by the living. Squatters, mostly. Of all the towers, the South Tower seemed the brightest, the most inhabited. He would start there. But as he looked into the sky sudden clouds came speeding across the top of the building and the building seemed to be falling on to him. He ran towards the entrance, his insides turning over.
He began to climb the stairs. Six doors on the first floor, all locked. On the fourth floor he found a door that was open. Inside was one bare room. Light filtered through a narrow window. He bent down, felt around. Chips of broken china, plastic flowers, dust. China that might’ve been an urn. Dust that might’ve been ashes. Now he had dead people on his fingers. He left the room, climbed quickly to the next floor. Once again, all the doors were locked. He tried to remember what he’d heard. Some of the ‘graves’ were just cupboards. But others were like apartments. You could sleep there, keep watch over your dead. He shivered.
He climbed again, from the ninth floor to the tenth. He looked up once, and jumped. A man in a shiny suit was standing at the top of the stairs.
Nathan swallowed. ‘Do you know where Tip Stubbs lives?’
The man walked right past him.
‘What about Jed Morgan?’
The man turned the corner and vanished. Standing there, in the half-light, it suddenly struck Nathan that the man might not have been real.
‘Tip,’ he yelled into the stairwell. ‘Tip? Are you there?’
He ran back down the stairs.
Once outside, he stood in the wind. The desolation crept into his bones and he began to shake. What was he supposed to do now? He looked up at the tower. That vertigo again. He imagined opening a door and finding Tip. His eyes shut to slits. The eyelids burred. Like screws.
‘They’re going to throw you out.’
‘Let them.’
And Jed a shadow by the window, the inside of his jacket lined with needles.
He saw an old man’s face. Bald on top, strands of grey hair plastered to his neck. Mouth stretched in the strangest grin. Long teeth stuck into his gums like ice-cream sticks. And, behind him, a curving wall of fast green water. And such noise in his ears, like gravel spilling off a truck. He reached around the man’s head, took him by the chin – then he felt the man swerve away from him, and saw him swallowed by the water, swallowed whole. He tried to follow the man, but the wave broke and he was yards away. He swam back to the place. The man had gone.
Back on shore he ran to the captain.
‘It was a rip,’ the captain said. ‘Nothing you could do.’
‘One moment he was there and then –’ Nathan couldn’t go on.
‘Some people get away. It’s one of the laws of the ocean.’ The captain put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. ‘You did your best, that’s all that counts.’
But you lost him.
Nathan couldn’t eat for days. He kept seeing that man’s face against a rising wall of water. It had happened six months ago, but some things stay fresh in your head.
The wind, sticky with salt, clung to his clothes, his skin. He was cold. He walked the half an hour to Mangrove Central thinking of nothing, and caught a train home. The next morning the captain called a meeting in the clubhouse, as Nathan had known he would, and announced that, in view of his recent poor attendance, Tip Stubbs was being expelled from the Club. This c
ame as no surprise to most Club members. Someone who didn’t show up, it meant you weren’t carrying your weight, it was seen as an act of selfishness, a breach of trust. Tip had stayed away too long; he’d been written off, forgotten. The only surprise was to hear his name again and to think that he’d ever been one of them.
Towards the end of the day Nathan was changing in the locker-room when Finn walked in with Ade and a friend of Ade’s called Larry.
‘Hey, Nates, I almost forgot,’ Finn said. ‘Your stepmother was here yesterday.’
Nathan stared up at him. ‘When?’
‘In the afternoon. She dropped in to see you, but you’d already left.’
‘That was his stepmother?’ Ade let out a low whistle.
Larry called across the room, ‘I could use a stepmother like that.’
‘Use,’ Ade said, and smirked.
Nathan slammed his locker door back on its hinges. ‘For Christ’s sake. She’s married to my dad.’
‘Nates,’ Ade said, ‘we were just joking.’
‘Yeah, it was only a joke,’ Larry said. ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you take a joke?’
Nathan sighed. He didn’t understand what Harriet was up to. During her time as an au pair, her prying had been innocent, playful. Almost a year had passed since then, and now there was an edge. A persistence. There were some days when he felt as if he was under siege.
‘So tell me, Nathan,’ she’d asked him only the other day, ‘have you done it yet?’ They were in the car. On their way back from the supermarket.
‘Done what?’
‘Made love to a girl.’
He didn’t answer her. There was so much sugar in her smile, he felt ill. He thought it might be diabetes.
‘How old are you?’ she asked him.
‘Sixteen.’
‘Where I come from, boys’ve all done it by the time they’re sixteen. Where I come from, that’s normal.’
He wouldn’t look at her. He stared out of the window instead. ‘I’m thinking of becoming a monk,’ he said.
It was a mild, sunny day and Dad was sitting on the porch, waiting for their return. When he heard the car he stood up, smiling. ‘How did it go?’ he asked. As if shopping was a polar expedition. As if it could go wrong.
The Five Gates of Hell Page 10