He saw the whole thing as a plot. The clothes Dad liked, the hair Dad liked. It had been so easy. A short skirt, a fringe, no make-up, and she was in. Then she could set to work. Wearing him down, wearing him out. Wearing him away to nothing. She was that dream of his come true, she was the planes made human. He imagined her standing in Dad’s bedroom at night, Dad asleep behind her. He watched her looking in the mirror. He saw her face begin to change. The whine of the engines, the slow turning on that one front wheel.
Upstairs Dad was still shouting. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it.’ He said it thirteen times, Nathan was counting, and then he couldn’t listen any more. He ran into the kitchen and pulled the cupboard open. He was doing everything as loudly as possible. He didn’t want to hear anything else from upstairs. Inside the cupboard was a stack of new light bulbs in their cardboard jackets. He stacked them in his arms and took them out into the yard. One by one he stripped their jackets off and hurled them against the outside wall of the house. A flat pop each time one exploded. Then a faint tinkling as the fragments of glass showered to the asphalt. Dad never said anything about the missing light bulbs. He simply put them on the shopping list the next Friday. ‘8 light bulbs,’ he wrote, ‘40-watt.’ Previously he’d always bought 100-watt bulbs, but 40-watt bulbs were cheaper and it didn’t matter how bright the bulbs burned if they were just going to be hurled at a wall.
They were still living in a sort of 40-watt half-light when Nathan followed Dad into the sitting-room one day and asked if he could speak to him alone. It was after lunch. He waited while Dad took his usual array of pills: first the flat white ones, then the round bronze ones, then the lozenges, half red, half black.
‘Have one of these,’ and Dad handed him a dark-green capsule the size of a pea. ‘It’s good for you.’
Nathan smiled and swallowed it.
‘So what is it?’ Dad said finally. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I’m going to stay with Yvonne for a few weeks.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘I don’t know. I think maybe after staying at Yvonne’s I’ll move on up the coast.’
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
Dad took off his half-moon spectacles. He leaned his head back and stared up into the corner of the room where the two walls joined the ceiling. ‘This is your home too, you know. I don’t like to think that you’re being driven out.’
‘I’m not. It’s just something I want to do.’
He was lying, of course, and they both knew it. Sometimes he thought of all the lies stored in his head. Or not so much lies, perhaps, as the truth held prisoner.
Dad brought his eyes down from the corner of the room. ‘I’ll miss you,’ he said in a low voice, and quickly looked away.
Nathan broke off. He wasn’t crying exactly. It was just that there were tears dropping from his eyes.
India-May put her hand on his. ‘It’s all right, Nathan,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’ She went to the sideboard and poured a brandy. ‘I know you’re clean and all that, but I think maybe you could make an exception tonight.’
He drank the brandy down without a word.
Later he said, ‘You know, when I worked in Moon Beach, we used to make bets with each other, bets on who could get through the spring tides.’ He stared at the glass in his hand. ‘Those waves are high, you try and get through, but they’re hitting the beach and chewing it up, you dive, you come up, you dive again, you come up again, you’re getting nowhere, it’s hard water, it keeps knocking you down and pounding on you, but you can’t stop, if you stop, you’ve lost it, it rolls you right back to the shore, it throws you out on the sand like an old tin can, you’ve got to keep diving, that’s where your fitness counts, you dive, you come up, and those waves keep pounding on you, and then, finally, you come to the big one, you get under it, and you’re safe, you’re on the other side of the water.’ He laughed softly and said, ‘The other side of the water,’ and shook his head. ‘Next thing is, you see a nice wave and you think fuck it, I’m going to take that wave, and you take it all the way in, and you get out, and you hold out your hand, someone owes you, and everyone’s watching because the red flags are up and there’s nobody in that surf, nobody.’ He turned the empty glass in his hands. ‘Sometimes you come out of that water and you lie down on the sand and you’re so tired you just fall right off to sleep.’
A silence as she imagined it.
‘If you won the bet,’ she said finally, ‘what did you win?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, nothing. A hamburger, maybe.’
And they were both laughing. Laughing and laughing. More tears, of a different kind.
Afterwards she said, ‘You know, you’re lucky having all that. I think it’s wonderful.’
‘I wish Dad thought so.’
‘Doesn’t he?’
He shook his head. ‘He wants me to do something worthwhile.’
‘What could be more worthwhile than saving people’s lives?’ ‘He doesn’t see it like that.’
‘Well, I think it’s wonderful. The ocean, the beach, it’s like your own kingdom. Worthwhile,’ and she snorted through her nose, ‘that Dad of yours, he must be soft in the head.’
It was almost as if he’d had an ear to the ground. As if he’d picked up that tremble in the earth, that hushed drumroll: the hooves of the enemy. Still far away, but moving in his direction. When he came home after work the next day he found a letter waiting just inside the door. It was postmarked Moon Beach, but he didn’t recognise the handwriting. He took the letter upstairs and lay down on his bed and tore it open.
‘By the time you read this letter,’ it began, ‘I will have left your father.’ There followed three pages of bitterness and accusation, which ended with the words, ‘It will be your father who suffers, not me.’ Signed simply, ‘Harriet Christie.’
His own name thrown in his face like acid.
He let the letter slip to the floor. He tried to laugh, but his laughter sounded forced in that small room.
Loyalty Is Silence
There are times when your life seems to jump tracks. Slow train to fast, local to express. You have the sense that, from now on, you’ll be travelling on a different line, you’ll be seeing different views through the window.
It was November and Jed had just turned twenty-two. Creed opened the glass panel one morning as they were returning from the airport and said, ‘Where do you live, Spaghetti?’
‘Mangrove East.’
Creed shook his head. ‘I need you closer.’
It was exactly what Jed had been waiting to hear, but he kept his voice level. ‘Where’ve you got in mind, sir?’
‘The Palace.’
Jed’s heart lifted in his ribs. The Palace was where Creed lived, in a penthouse suite on the fourteenth floor, so the idea made perfect sense. But the Palace was also the most exclusive apartment hotel in the city. It was located on Ocean Drive, between C and D; it took up the entire block. With its two twin towers of baroque grey stone, it was just about the only building in Moon Beach that wasn’t either white or pale-blue. Its lobby was the size of a railway station, all peach marble and glass and gilded metal. The central chandelier was gold-plated and weighed, it was rumoured, something in the region of half a ton. Everyone had stayed at the Palace. Heads of state, movie-stars, tycoons. Just to be able to give it as your address!
‘You’ll be in the basement,’ Creed said, ‘but it should be adequate.’ He allowed himself a smile. ‘It can hardly fail to be an improvement on Mangrove East, in any case.’
Jed moved that same week. To reach his new apartment you had to use the old tradesmen’s entrance: past the service elevator, down four flights of stairs, along a corridor with a linoleum floor. The basement of the Palace was a lost kingdom of storerooms, washrooms and boiler-rooms. Fat grey pipes hugging the ceilings, dull yellow walls. The air smelt of lagging, paint, damp. And also, ever so faintly, and inexplicably, of marzipan. In t
he end you came to a door that said (and this was equally inexplicable) 3D. There was no 3C and no 3E. There wasn’t even a 3 A. 3D was unique and without context. It was another dimension. It was Jed’s new home.
There were two rooms, both painted a tired pale-green. There was a bed, a TV, a phone. There was air-conditioning. That was about it. If you parted the net curtains and peered sideways and upwards you could see one tiny piece of bright blue sky, but you might pull a muscle doing it. A constant clash and tinkle came from the kitchens across the courtyard, like the percussion section of an orchestra from hell. At night the boiler took over, roaring and trembling until dawn. During his first week in the Palace he hardly slept.
It was during the second week that Carol asked him to dinner at her parents’ place. As the taxi moved down off the harbour bridge and into the suburb of Paradise, he remembered what Vasco had said, and turned to her.
‘Your father,’ he said, ‘is he really the chairman?’
Carol looked embarrassed. ‘Yes.’
He sat back. Jesus. So her father really was the chairman. Her father was Sir Charles Dobson.
‘Why?’ Carol said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘No, not really. Vasco said something about it, but I didn’t believe him.’
‘I thought everyone knew.’ And she gave him a smile that resembled gratitude. It was as if, in not knowing, he’d paid her a great compliment.
Sir Charles and Lady Dobson lived on Pacific Drive, a road that wound its way through the canyons, then doubled back towards the ocean to link, eventually, with the South Coast Expressway. The house was one of the white, wedding-cake mansions in the 10,000-block, high wrought-iron gates and video security, and just the hills rising in silence behind.
Jed paid the taxi and stood still. You needed millions to breathe this air. This air exactly, right here. Millions. And suddenly he took the rumours and put them on like a coat. Lifted and dropped his shoulders a few times, he’d seen people do it when they tried on clothes in stores. Not a bad fit. Maybe he really was a cunning son of a bitch, just like Vasco said he was. Certainly he was thinking all those thoughts. Jed Morgan, he was thinking. Chairman.
Dinner was plate after plate of food he’d hardly ever set eyes on, let alone eaten: caviar, bortsch, salmon, duck. And then, as if that wasn’t indigestible enough, the conversation turned to the subject of advertising. The new Paradise Corporation commercial had just aired the previous night. Jed had seen it. It opened with a black screen and a voice that said, ‘This is probably the most frightening place in the world.’ It pulled back slowly to reveal a fringe of green around the black. You were looking into an open grave. The voice went on to say that, when you were faced with something as frightening as death, you needed the right people around you, and the right people were the Paradise Corporation etc. etc. One of the papers had attacked the commercial for being too emotive. People at the dinner table were springing to the commercial’s defence, using words like ‘honest’ and ‘bold’.
‘Well,’ Jed said, speaking up for the first time, ‘at least there weren’t any tolling bells in it.’ All the talk around him suddenly subsided; he felt strangely shipwrecked in the silence. ‘I used to work on commercials for funeral parlours,’ he went on. ‘I used to think that if I heard one more tolling bell, I’d go out of my mind.’
After the laughter had died away, he told a story about one particular commercial that he’d worked on. It was a testimonial for a funeral parlour which had dealt with the victims of a forest fire. He needed the sound of a forest fire running under the voice-track, but he couldn’t find the effect on file. It was seven at night and the commercial had to be presented at breakfast the next day. In the end he had no choice. He had to create the effect himself.
‘How did you do that?’ Lady Dobson asked.
‘I’ll show you,’ Jed said, ‘but I need absolute silence.’
Out of his left pocket he produced a handful of candy-wrappers and, during the hush that followed, he created a forest fire for the Dobsons and their guests in the Dobson’s very own dining-room.
It was a great success.
‘And these are only Liquorice Whirls,’ he said. ‘In those days I was eating Almond Toffee Creams and they came in much cracklier paper.’
Either Sir Charles had forgotten what Jed did, or else nobody had bothered to tell him, because he now leaned forwards and, impressed, it seemed, by Jed’s ingenuity and verve, said, ‘Perhaps, young man, you should come and work for me.’
All eyes locked on Jed.
He waited three seconds. You have to time things.
‘But Sir Charles,’ he said, ‘I already do.’
He looked round. People were weeping with laughter. He caught Carol’s eye, and winked. His skin had picked up a glow from the lilies on the table. The candlelight had taken his cheap suit and made it over in some priceless fabric. The vintage wine had anointed his tongue with new and seductive language. He could do no wrong. When the meal was over, Sir Charles escorted him into the library.
He watched Sir Charles cut the tip off his cigar. Being old had done something to Sir Charles’s face, something that being poor sometimes did. It had sucked the colour out. Eyes, hair, skin: all different shades of grey and white. Distinguished, yes. But colourless. And cheeks with folds in them, like old wallets. He wondered how much Sir Charles was worth.
But now the cigar was lit and, turning to Jed, Sir Charles spoke through billowing smoke. ‘So who exactly do you work for?’
‘I work for Mr Creed. I’m his driver.’
Maybe it was only a coincidence but, as soon as Jed pronounced the name of his employer, the cigar fell from Sir Charles’s fingers. It bounced on the carpet, shedding chunks of red-hot ash.
‘God-DAMN.’ Sir Charles spread his legs and stooped. He flicked the ash towards the fireplace with the back of his hand. Then he stuck the cigar between his teeth and slowly sucked the life back into it.
‘Let me ask you something, Jed,’ he said, when the smoke was billowing once more. ‘Have you ever been to head office?’
‘I have, yes.’
‘What did you think of it?’
The head office of the Paradise Corporation, as Sir Charles knew perfectly well, was just about the most famous building in the city. Built entirely of black glass, it marked the beginning of what was known as Death Row, a stretch of downtown First Avenue where most of the big funeral parlours had their offices. All night long lights burned in the central elevator shaft and in the windows of the twenty-fifth floor. The result was a white cross that stood out among the familiar neon logos of airlines and oil companies. The cross was a landmark. You could even buy postcards of it. Jed had only been inside the building once, and all he could remember was the angel. She was part sculpture, part fountain. Her head and body were metal and her wings were water, water that was forced through holes in her back and lit from beneath so it looked solid, like glass. He remembered the hiss of those wings, the lick and swish of revolving doors, the warble of phones. All tricks a hypnotist might use. Forget your loss. Forget your grief. He remembered drifting, drifting close to sleep.
‘You walk into that building,’ Sir Charles said, ‘and you know you’re in capable hands.’ Clouds of smoke trailed over his shoulder as he paced. ‘You’ve got to win people’s trust. Trust is very important. Without trust,’ and he came to a standstill and tipped his chin into the air, the thought still forming.
‘Without trust,’ Jed said, ‘we wouldn’t be standing here now.’
Sir Charles swung round. ‘Precisely.’ For a moment he was rendered motionless by surprise, a kind of respect. But only for a moment. ‘What I’m trying to say to you is, this is a hard business. A cutthroat business at times. But you should always remember one thing. It’s people that you’re dealing with. People.’ He thrust both hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. ‘I’m sixty-nine and I’m still working. Nobody really retires from this business. It’s a way of life.’
He showed Jed to the door of the library. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, my boy?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
Then his face moved close to Jed’s, and he said, ‘Are you interested in my daughter?’
‘I’ll let you into a secret, Sir Charles,’ Jed said. ‘I’m not interested in your daughter at all. I’m just pretending to be. It’s your money I’m really after.’
Sir Charles stared at Jed, and Jed stared back; he wasn’t going to help Dobson out with this one. At last a smile began to pull at the folds in Sir Charles’s face, as if his cheeks really were wallets and his smile was going through them, looking for cash, then the smile turned to laughter, it pushed between his teeth, it was dry and rhythmic, it sounded uncannily like someone counting a stack of dollar bills. Jed saw Carol at the end of the corridor and began to walk towards her.
‘You remember what I said,’ Sir Charles called after him.
The next day Creed asked Jed to drive him out to the Crumbles. The Crumbles lay to the east of the city. All the land out there had been under water once. It was flat for miles. There were a few wooden beach huts down by the shoreline. Some old mine buildings in the distance, some gravel pits. Otherwise just shingle, grey and orange, and a soft wind tugging at the heads of weeds.
He followed Creed’s directions, leaving the road for an unpaved track that seemed to lead towards the ocean. The track widened and then vanished. Then they were driving over rough ground, loose stones popping under the tyres. He parked close to where the land sloped downwards to a narrow pebble beach, and switched the engine off.
Creed stared out of the window, his chin cushioned on one hand, his eyes doubly concealed, first by the tinted windows of the car, then by his sunglasses. Jed thought he understood. It was like Vasco and the mudbanks of the river. It was where Creed came to do his thinking. Where was Vasco? Jed wondered. He’d scarcely set eyes on him since the night they’d had dinner together at the house in Westwood. Nobody had mentioned him either, and Jed didn’t feel he should ask. He poured himself a cup of coffee from his private flask and watched the white gulls lift and scatter against the dull grey sky.
The Five Gates of Hell Page 15