The Sea Gate

by Jane Johnson

  *

  There was, she was relieved to hear, to be no further deployment of officers in West Penwith. Sergeant Richards stopped her in the street on her way to her art class. ‘Manoeuvres elsewhere,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Don’t worry about the parrot either, miss.’

  She grinned at him. ‘Did you manage to talk to Mr White out of filing his report?’

  ‘Oh no, he wrote it, and gave it to me to implement. But let’s just say it ended up in the round file,’ he said cryptically. ‘Best make sure you keep the beggar quiet, though, or it’ll be me who gets in hot water.’

  It took her most of the rest of the day to understand what he meant by ‘the round file’, and when she did, she laughed. Good old Sergeant Richards: what a nice man he was.

  *

  Days slipped by. Spring arrived with a fanfare of daffodils and hedgerows full of violets and primroses. When Hamid got too stir crazy, he would, after muttered prayers on the misbaha, make his way down through the tunnel to meet Olivia at the beach. She taught him to swim, and to hold his breath underwater – just in case – though at first he had been reluctant, remembering his terrifying ordeal when the fishing boat blew up. There were rocks to hide behind, the cove was sheltered and not overlooked from above and the navy had commandeered most of the fishing boats, so what sea-traffic there was tended to be far out towards the horizon in the convoy lanes.

  One day, late in the summer of 1944 when Mary was on the little beach in the village with her friends, they watched a pod of dolphins out in the bay, leaping joyfully through the waves, the sunlight flashing on the whites of their bellies. Once they watched two huge triangular fins slip past the outer arms of the cove, one large fin followed ten or fifteen feet later by a smaller fin. Hamid scrambled up onto a rock. ‘Sharks!’

  Olivia laughed at his panic. ‘Just one shark,’ she corrected him, and as she spoke it rose to reveal a body as long and grey as a miniature submarine, before submerging once again until only the shadow of it was visible beneath the turquoise sea. ‘It’s a basking shark,’ Olivia said. ‘We get them here at this time of year, chasing the shoals of little fish around the coast. It’s completely harmless.’

  ‘It’s huge,’ Hamid said, wide-eyed. ‘I don’t think I want to swim any more.’ He scanned the waters of the cove in case other monsters lurked unseen.

  They made love to the sound of gulls and kittiwakes, then Olivia lay back on the shingle, feeling the heat from the sun-warmed pebbles soaking into her body. She stared up into the wide blue sky as a pigeon beat past overhead, the feathers of its wings made luminous by the sun, and sighed. ‘I wish every day could be like this.’

  Hamid took her hand in his and began to sing softly. His singing voice surprised her – a sweet tenor, confident and tuneful. When at last the notes drifted away, she turned her head towards him. ‘That was beautiful.’

  ‘It’s an Amazigh song called “The Dove and the Hunter”. We never speak directly of love: it tempts the evil eye. You are my dove.’

  ‘And you the hunter?’ Olivia teased.

  He chuckled. ‘I would make a poor hunter,’ he said. ‘One glance from you would kill me every time.’

  ‘Do you really believe in all that stuff, djinns and the evil eye?’ What she really wanted to ask was, ‘Do you believe in God?’ But that felt like too big a question; a question that would open a vast gulf between them. Ever since Mamie had been murdered, maybe even since her father had been killed, Olivia had been questioning the faith she had been raised in. She had even stopped going to church, despite Mary’s tantrums. The child was very narrow in her views. ‘You’ll go to hell,’ she told Olivia, and spent her Sundays reading from the Bible and saying prayers to safeguard her own fate. In truth, Olivia avoided church largely because she could not bear to see Farmer Roberts and the rest of them. She could have walked down-chapel and changed congregations, but a stiff resistance to the whole tawdry idea of religion had grown in her.

  Now, Hamid squeezed her fingers and said, ‘Of course. There may be no physical djinns – what you call them here – little people?’

  ‘Piskeys, they’re the good ones, or spriggans, not so good,’ Olivia supplied.

  ‘But there is evil all around us. I would rather turn its gaze aside than confront it head-on.’

  ‘But you did confront it head-on,’ said Olivia, remembering that terrible night.

  ‘I came to warn you, not to kill him,’ Hamid said. ‘I am no warrior, no hero out of a story, I’m just a… I don’t know what I am. Just a man.’ He fell silent for a long time.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Olivia asked eventually, spurred by eternal female curiosity.

  ‘My family back home. Especially Samira.’

  Olivia felt her heart dip. She was greedy for his attention: she wanted every iota of it. He had told her about his family, reeling off the names of his nine siblings like some sort of incantation. Ibrahim, Yacine, Amir, Nazim, Karim, Omar and Mehdi; Samira and Yasmine. Seven brothers, two sisters. He missed them all. He was right in the middle, after his brother Omar and his sister Samira. Whenever he said Samira’s name he paused and looked sorrowful. Olivia had once asked if she’d died, but he said it was worse than that: she had lost all her babies to miscarriage or stillbirth and felt God had cursed her.

  ‘I am worried that her husband Kasem will leave her, or take another wife.’

  Olivia had never heard of such a thing. ‘Can he do that?’

  ‘Under Islam a man may take four wives.’

  Olivia sat bolt upright, scandalized. ‘Four?’

  Hamid laughed. ‘Imagine. As if one isn’t enough trouble.’

  Rather put out, Olivia went down to the edge of the surf and knelt to wash the semen, stiff now as dried egg-white, off her thigh. They were always as careful as they could be, and so far they had been lucky. But perhaps she was barren, like poor Samira? One part of her rather hoped so: raising Mary was a trial, and heaven only knew what would happen if she ever did fall pregnant. She remembered Winnie’s condemnation of the Land Girl at Perranuthnoe and her ‘brown baby’ and something inside her twisted with fear. They should stop having sex, they really should. There were other things they could do that were almost as nice: they had tried many of them. She wondered if he had learned some of those things from Madame Duchamps, and went cold with jealousy. But she knew she wouldn’t have the strength of will to stop: she was a slave to the sensation of Hamid moving inside her, hard and male, alien and yet so desired. She was addicted to him, even more than he was addicted to sugar.

  ‘Better go in,’ she said, retrieving her tangle of clothes.

  ‘You’re a tyrant.’ He grinned, lying there uncovered, his hands behind his head, his skin as brown as a conker. Under her gaze his cock twitched once like a separate, live animal.

  ‘Come along,’ she said firmly, doing her belt up extra tight.

  They crunched back up the beach to the back of the cove and kissed at the entrance to the tunnel. ‘I hate going in here,’ he said. ‘It’s like walking into the realm of djinns.’

  He was half-teasing her, but also half-serious. She put a finger to his lips. ‘I know.’

  He gazed into the dark maw between the granite rock faces. ‘When I get to the top my heart beats like a rabbit’s. It calms only when I am on the other side of the door, though I think the spirits only walk at night. I must carve the symbols on the other gate, too.’ He tilted his chin up to indicate the sea gate. ‘To keep you safe.’

  ‘Someone might see you.’

  He balled a fist. ‘I will do it at night. When the moon is next full.’

  22

  Becky

  I FIND EDDIE IN GABRIEL’S ROOM, THOUGH HE’S KEEPING his distance from the parrot, which is watching him closely, claws and beak locked to the bars at the front of the cage. He’s regarding the painting between the bookcase and the window, the one of the little fishing boat ploughing a lonely course out into the bay, his hands in hi
s pockets, his head almost touching the canvas.

  ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ I say, and watch as he flinches, so preoccupied that he hadn’t heard me come in.

  ‘Not really my sort of thing,’ he drawls, stepping back.

  I know it is not a style of art he appreciates, so I am curious as to why he is taking such a close interest in it. But I reckon I can guess. ‘I wonder who the artist is?’ I say casually.

  If he knows, he’s hiding it well. He shrugs. ‘Loads of artists doing this sort of semi-abstract landscape thing down here. It’s all about the light.’

  ‘I think it’s lovely. There’s a lot of texture to give the waves real depth and body, and the layering of colour is amazing.’

  ‘Bit blah for my taste, to be honest.’

  He runs a hand through his hair, lets his fringe fall across his eyes so that his expression is hidden. It’s a familiar gesture and one I suddenly recognize for what it is: a disguise for a lie. Other occasions flicker through my memory. Oh yes, then, and then. I always knew, I think, subconsciously, when Eddie was lying to me, but I was never confident enough to challenge him.

  He flicks the fringe back, open and smiling again. ‘Cornwall’s done you good. You look… different.’

  ‘Clean air and sunshine,’ I say. ‘And getting away from London.’

  ‘Getting away from me, you mean.’ He laughs. It’s supposed to be disarming. I’m meant to demur – oh no, how could you imagine that? I say nothing. See how it discomfits him. He shifts from foot to foot.

  I suppose I do look different. I have more colour, my muscles are more toned. I’ve been more active than when I’m in London, with all the cleaning and the walking up and down hills, the steps, the swimming. I feel fit and well. I’m not used to thinking of myself in this way. So much of my time was taken up with the shock of illness, of hospitals and treatment, with endless blood tests and check-ups and scans. I’ve been a lump of meat on an operating table, a subject for medical discussion and examination, an invalid, a patient. Never really a person in my own right or on my own terms.

  Other than examining my fading scars in the mirror, I’ve not given much thought to my cancer in the past few weeks. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about it at all – maudlin thoughts came to me at unexpected times, woke me at night, made me wonder whether it was worth buying a new tub of moisturizer – but getting away has been good for me, having a project and someone other than myself to think about. Oddly enough, the isolation has given me back to myself, made me stronger – perhaps even stronger than I have ever been. I daresay I will have to go and have that scan sometime, but at the moment I am listening to my body, which tells me – as the consultant did – not to panic.

  ‘You know, Eddie,’ I say, ‘I think being away from you has been a real tonic.’

  He looks aghast, then breaks into nervous laughter. ‘Ha ha! Very good, Becks. You had me going there.’

  ‘In fact,’ I go on, ‘being away from you has done me a power of good, as Mum would have said.’

  His smile wavers, then he musters the tattered remnants of his old charm. ‘Hey, let’s not retread old ground, eh, Becks? This morning was great, wasn’t it? Just like it used to be.’

  ‘This morning,’ I enunciate carefully, ‘was a big mistake. I don’t know why I let it happen, but I shouldn’t have. I don’t want to be with you any more, Eddie, and that’s the plain fact of it. We’re not right together.’

  His left eye twitches, as it does sometimes when he’s under stress.

  ‘You are joking? Aren’t you? Come on, Becks, this isn’t like you. It’s not like you at all.’

  ‘That’s probably because I’ve changed. I’m not the doormat I used to be. The one you wiped your feet on every day but otherwise hardly noticed.’

  He looks astonished. ‘You’ve gone mad. Are you on different medication or something?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t possibly be immune to your charm if I wasn’t taking mind-altering pills? Don’t make me laugh.’

  ‘But this morning—’

  ‘This morning happened because I was horny and you were there, OK?’

  Blood fills his face. ‘You bitch! You utter fucking bitch! You’ve stumbled on your own little goldmine here – big house full of valuable paintings, old woman at death’s door – and you don’t want to share it. I wondered why you weren’t wearing your ring. And no doubt there’s money coming from your mother’s estate too, so you thought,’ he puts on a grotesque female voice, ‘“I’m financially independent now, I don’t need Eddie any more.”’

  ‘Oh, you remember my mother now, do you, the one who bought your studio for you? The woman whose funeral you couldn’t be bothered to attend? Let’s face it, Eddie, you’re a nasty piece of work. You’re one of life’s takers, and you never give back. We’ve been together ten years and you’ve cheated on me at least four times during that time—’

  ‘Well, who could blame me? You were so mimsy, so… bloodless. You’d just lie there and take it, so sweet, so passive, so desperate to please. Sometimes a man wants a bit of a challenge, a woman who puts up a bit of a fight in bed, someone who’s a bit more fucking sexy.’

  In the early days of our relationship Eddie would sometimes slap me in the middle of intercourse – usually just a tap, on the cheek, the buttock, the leg, but occasionally he left marks. It had perplexed and upset me, and had the opposite effect to the one he was after. I grew limp with confusion, withdrawing out of my body and into my head. Eventually he had stopped trying to goad me and, I suppose, gone elsewhere for the more exciting tangles he sought. Back then, it made me feel ashamed and diminished: now it made me furious.

  ‘It’s a bit hard to be “sexy” when your breasts have been chopped off and you’ve been injected with poison. Where were you when I came home in a taxi after four hours of chemo, feeling like a wrung-out rag, to an empty house, wondering where you were? You try being sexy when you’re throwing up all day, thinking you’re going to die. And all the time I knew something was going on. I noticed you suddenly taking an interest in your appearance: the weights that turned up in the studio, the mysterious disappearance of the grey in your hair – I know damn well it wasn’t me sticking empty Just For Men containers in the bin! It was that trampy little waitress from the Cuban restaurant you used to take me to, wasn’t it? Lola or Lulu, or whatever. What was she, seventeen, eighteen? You used to roll in at all hours reeking of cheap wine and sex. I may have been sick and knackered, but my sense of smell was stronger than ever on chemo. Did you think you had a free pass because I was so sick? Or that I was so “bloodless” that I didn’t care? What kind of man does that to his partner at the worst time in her life?’

  ‘A bad man. A weak man…’

  The voice comes from behind me. Reda steps into the room.

  ‘… and a thief.’

  There is an object under his arm, a large rectangle bound in a bin bag, dripping with rain. I know instantly what it is.

  ‘I saw him put it in the boot of his car,’ Reda says conversationally.

  Eddie glares at him. ‘Who the fuck are you? And what the hell do you think you’re doing fiddling with my car?’ Then he gives me a nasty grin. ‘I knew you’d run away down here with some…’ he regards Reda contemptuously, ‘some fucking wog. Met him at the kebab shop, did you?’

  Reda puts The Sea Gate down carefully by the door and moves to my side. His expression is closed, his emotions controlled, but I can feel the heat coming off him in waves. ‘It’s OK,’ I say, putting a hand on his arm. ‘I can deal with this.’ After all, I faced off the Sparrow brothers. At the moment I feel I could punch Eddie’s lights out, lay him flat on the floor. It’s an odd feeling for someone who has been so timid all her life.

  ‘I thought I knew the worst of you,’ I say very coldly. ‘But I see there are depths to you I never imagined. You’d better leave. Before I call the police.’

  Eddie laughs. ‘You’ll be lucky: there’s no fucking signal! And I reckon I c
an take out loverboy here.’

  ‘This kind man is not my lover: he’s a plumber, helping me get the house ready for Cousin Olivia’s return.’ I glare at the man I wasted ten years of my life on. ‘Tell me, Eddie, did James tell you about her paintings? Well, obviously he did and you put two and two together. Why else would you come all this way?’

  He’s thinking of denying it, is searching for a form of words that will somehow justify his actions – the hiring of a car, the long drive, no warning, the theft – then his eyes slide back to Reda and he sneers. ‘There’s nothing else here to bother with, is there?’ he says bitterly. ‘You’ve made that abundantly clear. Ten years, eh? Gone, just like that.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Why don’t you let me take the painting with me? As a goodwill gesture at the dissolution of our marriage? A proper clean break? I’ll clear all my things out of the house and you can have it to yourself.’ He licks his lips. ‘Go on, Becks. Times are hard. The show didn’t do nearly as well as I’d expected.’

  He is so contemptible. I can’t imagine now, seeing his mask slip, how I ever found him attractive, let alone depended on him to the extent of giving him power over me – my choices, my clothes, my emotions. I look at him, hanging on my every word, his eyes crafty.

  ‘You’re pathetic, Eddie. You’re a conman and a creep. No, of course you can’t have the painting. Even if it were mine to give – which it is not – I’d do anything – anything – to keep it out of your hands! All you care about is money and being seen as some sort of great man of the art world. You’ve never cared about anyone other than yourself, least of all me. You’re a hollow, hollow man, and the worst of it is you think that everyone else is like you. Now clear off, before we make a citizens’ arrest! I never want to see you again!’