And then it happens. There’s another noise from behind her. Tiny at first, almost submerged in the papery rustle: nonetheless, she hears it. Of course she does — she’s been attuned to this sound for twelve years. Sweat leaps on her back. She steps forward and stoops over the desk. The skull leers up at her. Looking back is fatal. Now the noise behind her is louder, and much closer.
It doesn’t matter if she turns or not. It’s already re-entered her body, a dull drumming heat. Long-seeded inside her, devouring her energy, sucking her dry.
‘Leave me alone. I’m a different person now. Everything is different!’
But even as she speaks she hears the echo behind her, the inevitable reasoning. What has happened is always stronger than What might be. Like the children’s game:
Rock blunts scissors
Paper covers rock
Past conquers future
It’s true, whatever the psychologists like to believe, urging her, with their tissue-paper mouths and their white-knuckled sincerity, to have faith. Sometimes, scissors emerge unblunted! Sometimes, paper slides away intact! The talk of professional adults, who’ve learnt the language of professional nonsense because their livelihoods depend on it. But children know the natural, immutable order of things. Every day, unflinchingly, they stare it in the face. And so does Lace.
All the same, she tries. How could she not, with her skin still starred by Bright’s kisses, and evidence of his bravery — his against-all-odds attitude — splattered over the wall in front of her?
‘Please, let go of me!’
There’s no hope of this, of course. Even Geoffrey at his most optimistic has spoken only in terms of recovery and acceptance, never of escape. As for the repeated assurances of Bright and Gibby — well, if you’ve ever loved someone, you’ll know the importance of pretending you can keep that person safe.
The noise behind her has become almost deafening. She raises her head and stares at Bright’s paper trail: newsprint skyscraper, rough-cut mountains, pixellated moon.
Images and facts. On the back of her neck, a familiar scorching. Her eyes burn red-hot and suddenly the wall in front of her caves in. Looking back, looking ahead: it doesn’t make any difference. Facts and images, always there, Hydra mouths open, ready to swallow her whole.
Sure enough, it’s happening. The floorboards turn to gravel; she shifts on the suddenly uneven surface. If Bright walked into the room now, he might be able to stop it. But she knows now (and the knowledge arrives like a fist, smashing her in the stomach) that as soon as Bright leaves — every time he leaves — this will come back to devour her. Endlessly, sickeningly repetitive, the dread fingers of dawn exploring Prometheus’s bloodied body.
‘Grace.’ The groan comes from a few feet away. ‘Grace… run away!’ She forces herself to turn her head. How can she not? She must always turn her head and look, because she loves them.
The car is right beside her, its wheels spinning, its roof mangled, fires licking from the gaping hole in the windscreen. ‘Grace.’ She puts her hand to her forehead to wipe away the pouring blood. Through a thin red curtain she can see her father’s face, surrounded by flames, eyebrows alight, prematurely silver hair turning black in a weird reversal of time. ‘Run away. Get away from the car.’
She’s stumbling backwards. Glancing down, she sees her bare legs glittering with glass: a hundred tiny sharp shines, embedded in her flesh. Looks again at the car — sees her mother, hanging upside down from the seatbelt. The violent, violated angle of her neck is frightening. Her mother’s eyes are open but they don’t see, her body is blazing like a Guy on a bonfire. ‘Mama!’ The scream comes not from Grace, but from inside the jumble of flames and steel.
‘Esme?’ Grace lurches forwards again, towards the back door that’s bent open like a hairpin. ‘Esme?’ But the flames rush at her, screaming in her face and scratching her cheeks raw, pushing her back so hard that she sprawls on the road.
Blood gushing from her head, stickiness all over her palms, and, when she staggers to her feet, she sees a piece of metal sticking out of her arm. Her father cries out again from the flames; is that a part of the steering wheel stuck through his chest? And then the whole car is swallowed up by fire — whoomph — and she’s running along the road, crying in her throat, shoes left behind her, lost, bare soles ripped by the gravel.
No one comes to help. She’s all alone, running to nowhere in this empty unfamiliar landscape. Vast fields stretch away beside her; the huge sky is hollow above her. Everything is grey, she’s alone, and she’s running, running — no cars, no buildings, no one at all. When she falls, skidding on the road, hands and legs torn into bloody shreds, she can’t stand up again. Kneeling in the middle of the road, she looks back. Her family is nothing but a dirty orange smudge on the horizon.
WHEN SHE LOOKS AROUND, expecting to see scorched floorboards, the room is much as it was when Bright left. She drags the mattress back onto the bed, straightens the bedclothes, and shakes up the pillows.
You’d think she might feel anger, searing panic, or fear. But the emotions that arrive in times of crisis are not always what one expects. She’s quite calm. She pulls on her boots, takes her coat from the chair: now there’s barely a sound, except for the clicking of the radiator.
As if in a trance, she moves to the door. The handle is surprisingly cool, the door opens easily, she slips through. Just as she steps over the threshold a small piece of paper falls from the wall and skids across the floor towards her. But the door is closed. It’s too late.
MESSENGERS
OUTSIDE IT’S BRIGHT AND cold. A sun fierce enough to cut diamonds. A sky so solid and blue that you could reach up and touch it.
‘Damn!’ Gibby shades his eyes. ‘Whatever happened to seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness?’
‘Perhaps German seasons disregard the rules of English poets?’ Bright crunches beside him on frosted grass, carrying a plate of toast stacked so high it looks like a mini-skyscraper. ‘Should we have brought coffee for her?’ He pauses at the entrance to the Old Building in sudden indecision.
Lace likes tea with her toast. He’s about to say it, but it sounds proprietorial. ‘God no, not the black bilge water they serve here,’ he says instead. ‘She hates it.’
Up the stairs, stumbling in the sudden dimness, stopping to knock at the door of Lace’s room. ‘She’s not there.’ Bright rearranges his toppling toast. ‘She must still be in my —’ He stops out of tact. ‘Upstairs.’ His long turquoise coat brushes softly against the banisters as he leads the way to the next floor.
As Gibby watches Bright push open the door, he feels odd, hesitant. He’s never been in Bright’s room before — but, more to the point, he doesn’t want to see Lace (however much better) lying in someone else’s rumpled bed. He half-shields his eyes, steps back.
‘She’s not here either.’ Bright is turning slowly in the middle of the room that looks strangely empty, although why this should be, with the same amount of furniture as in Gibby’s room and a significant number of books, is difficult to understand.
Gibby hovers in the doorway. ‘Maybe she went down to the dining hall after all?’
‘We would have seen her on our way over.’ Bright sets down the toast and puts his hands to his head: a curious gesture, full of a suppressed emotion — but what? Suddenly, looking through the thick dusty light, Gibby is finding it hard to decipher anything. ‘Maybe she’s having a shower?’ he suggests.
‘Of course. That’s probably it.’ Bright sounds relieved. He begins twirling again, even more slowly.
‘Do you think I should wait in my own room? Strictly speaking I shouldn’t be in here. You know, Palace rules.’
Bright laughs. ‘We’ve already broken more rules than I can count. Anyway, what’s the worst-case scenario? We’ll be asked to leave early, which is exactly what we’re hoping to do.’ He pulls out a threadbare swivel chair. ‘Have a seat. Were I as sophisticated and confused as Savage, I could offer you a whi
sky from under a floorboard, but as it is I can only offer you a book.’
Gibby threads his way through the stacks. ‘It’s like a mobile library in here. Do you always take so many when you go away?’
‘No. I guess when I packed I was feeling more than usually lonely. Though most of these are pretty well-travelled.’
‘You take the same books with you wherever you go?’
‘That’s the whole point. I wouldn’t go away with strangers, would you?’
‘It must get boring, though,’ ventures Gibby, ‘never having anything new to read when you’re on holiday.’
‘Oh, I don’t usually read them.’ Bright shrugs and smiles. ‘It’s just important to have them around.’
‘The Great Gatsby!’ As Gibby reaches for it, the cover glitters; and when he picks it up his fingertips tingle, as if it’s electrically charged. ‘I read this in school. Gatsby was shot, right? But I don’t remember why. And Daisy… she was unattainable. The unreachable green light on the end of the landing.’ It comes back slowly, hazily. His school days and everything connected to them are obscured by blurred vision and static noise.
Bright takes the book from him. ‘I don’t know if it’s my favourite of his.’ He flicks through it half-nostalgically, half-critically. ‘But I always bring one Fitzgerald with me. He’s the most constant companion in adversity. Rich, then broke, writing scripts, writing novels — everything was a battle, until finally he dropped dead of a heart attack.’
‘That —’ Gibby clears his throat. ‘That cheers you up?’
‘I mistrust contented people. Contentment is so static. The next step is to stop breathing altogether.’ He looks straight at Gibby. ‘You understand. It’s not easy being me, but at least I know I’m alive.’
Suddenly Gibby does understand — not only this, but everything about Bright up to this point in time, in an alien room, in a foreign country. The swift arrival of personal knowledge occurs in the sliver of a second. ‘I’m sorry I hit you. It was about me, not about you.’ This is all he says, but it has the ring of a permanent peace offering. And because of this — the desire for mutual peace, without guilt or the weight of a personal debt — he also knows he can never tell Bright that he was the one who found him, smashed up, unconscious, at the bottom of the building.
Bright holds up his hand. ‘Bravo! Spoken like a true therapy patient! Seriously, I might not have deserved it last night but I consider it payment for the arsehole I was to you earlier.’ He glances at the door, rearranges the stack of toast, gnaws his thumbnail.
‘Lace takes a while in the shower,’ says Gibby reassuringly. ‘At least, she used to.’ God, does that sound as if he’s slept with her? ‘Not that I —’ He almost stammers. ‘I just used to be around sometimes at breakfast time.’
‘She told me you’d stay up with her when she couldn’t sleep. And visit her when she was in a bad way. She said…’ Bright pauses. ‘You were like the best friend everyone wants, and hardly anyone gets.’
Gibby blinks rapidly. ‘Well, you’ve got to look after those close to you. I didn’t do anything other people wouldn’t.’
‘But other people didn’t.’ He turns and walks — almost wades — through the soft thick air to the window. ‘God, they’ve really nailed this bastard shut. Brilliantly planned: saving us from jumping, while killing us by slow suffocation.’ He cranes closer to the glass. ‘Hey, isn’t that your village friend?’
‘The girl from the bakery? She’s here?’
It’s true, there she is, hanging around on the pavement in a desultory yet anxious manner, peering up at the building through her black fringe as if waiting for someone. Nervously, Gibby steps to the side of the window. ‘Can she see us?’
Bright waves experimentally. ‘It appears not. Do you not want her to see you?’
Gibby ignores this. ‘Why would she come here? She thinks we’re all Norman-Bates mad.’
‘She seems to have brought a sidekick,’ comments Bright. ‘A tattooed, hooded sidekick. Maybe this is a pistols at dawn situation.’
The sight of the silent waiting couple makes Gibby feel strangely flustered. In a whoosh, he sees his parents, standing in the hospital car park as the ambulance brought him in — blackened, stunned, temporarily deaf. ‘The siren was wailing but I couldn’t hear it,’ he says. ‘Their mouths were moving but there was no sound.’
‘Eh?’ Bright looks at him in surprise. ‘Whose mouths? What siren?’
‘I’ve got to go down there.’ He tries to sound resolute. ‘She must be waiting for me, don’t you think?’
‘You, or maybe Donovan? Who knows where that devil plays on the side.’ Bright is kicking off his red shoes and pulling on his boots. ‘I’m coming with you. I hate waiting. But first —’ He strides to the desk and scribbles something on a clean sheet of paper. ‘A note for Lace,’ he explains over his shoulder, ‘in case she comes back while we’re outside.’
They tread as quietly as they can down the stairs. Dr Mallory’s voice, slightly shrill today, is echoing through the entrance hall. ‘Yes, Donovan, I know we need to set the date, but it isn’t the best time to ask Geoffrey for leave. For god’s sake, you set the kitchen on fire!’
‘I almost feel sorry for him.’ Bright’s face is alive with curiosity.
Safely across the foyer. Nearly at the front door — but something is stuck to the sole of Gibby’s shoe. He peels it off, sees the small-print of film festival listings. ‘Is this yours? Sorry, it’s a bit crumpled.’
Bright takes the clipping, turns it over, smoothes it out. ‘It must have fallen off the wall. My high-wire walker. It fits into my book but I’m not sure how yet.’ He looks almost lost, staring at the figure teetering against grainy air, the long curved pole bisecting the photographed sky.
‘Give me that again.’ Gibby almost snatches it back, and turns it over again. He points to a name. ‘That’s Lace’s father.’
‘A retrospective of his films.’ Bright stares. ‘In Berlin.’
‘Do you think she saw this? Do you?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. If it was on the floor, I suppose she could have. If it was lying this way up.’ Bright’s eyes are fixed on the newsprint as if the answer’s there. ‘Would it upset her?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ An unconscious echo: each deferring to the other, when it comes to in-depth knowledge of Lace. They step quickly through the front door into the bright outer world, making the Bakery Girl start and clutch her boyfriend’s arm.
‘Hi! What’s up?’ Gibby aims for a casual, friendly tone. ‘This is — this is my friend Bright.’ He can’t complete the introductions because, strange as it seems, he has no idea of the Bakery Girl’s name.
The girl nods uncertainly. Face scrubbed clean of makeup, she looks younger than before. Only her eyes are rimmed around with heavy dark kohl. Her boyfriend looms behind her, hood pulled low over close-set eyes, cheeks peppered with acne.
Bright breaks the silence. ‘Did you want to come inside? We’re not really allowed to invite you in.’
The boy looks alarmed. ‘We agreed we wouldn’t, right?’ He steps behind the Bakery Girl, as if using her for shelter.
‘There’s nothing wrong with them.’ She sounds like a cross mother.
Gibby takes a deep breath and steps through the gate. ‘Do you need to talk to me? Should we go somewhere else?’
The boyfriend pulls the cord of his hood tighter, closing it off around his face, but the Bakery Girl looks at Gibby and holds out her hands. ‘Your friend. The blonde girl who gave me these.’ Her wrists are encircled with silver: once loosely around Lace’s bird-bones, now snug on her smooth baby-skin.
‘What?’ Gibby’s voice is edged with alarm. ‘Have you seen her?’
The girl nods. ‘Wolfgang noticed her first.’ She sounds a little sharp.
‘Well, she’s beautiful.’ Wolfgang looks defiant. ‘In a weird way.’
‘She was walking around the square looking at the sky,’ says the girl
. ‘Around and around, looking up.’
‘Not at the sky.’ Wolfgang sounds annoyed. ‘At the clock.’
‘You said the sky! You did at first.’ And they’re off, in German — Du hast gesagt… hab ich nicht! Ich dachte… du hast es gesagt! — until Bright slams the gate so hard that the wall almost crumbles, and lichen flies.
‘What the hell was she doing? And when?’ He’s almost shouting, although his face is devoid of expression: his eyes are narrowed to slits against the blinding sunlight and the bickering.
‘Even though he said it wrong at first —’ the girl gives in — ‘she was looking at the clock on the church tower. She just walked around and around, like she was waiting for something. She kept — I don’t know the word. She was walking badly.’
‘Stumbling?’ Gibby grabs her wrist. ‘Is she still there?’
The Bakery Girl doesn’t pull away. Her skin is warm but the silver almost cold. No, she tells Gibby with something like regret. No, the blonde girl walked away in the direction of the station, but very slowly because she was stum… yes, she was stumbling. And that was when they — the Bakery Girl and her boyfriend — decided they’d better come here.
‘Was she carrying anything?’ Bright’s voice is too loud. ‘A suitcase?’
‘A shopping bag,’ says the boyfriend decisively.
‘No!’ The girl whirls around, her wrist rips out of Gibby’s hand. ‘Don’t make things up. The shops haven’t even opened yet.’
‘Oh.’ The boy flushes. ‘I was just trying to help.’ And it seems this is true: his eyes have slipped towards the edges of his face, making him more trustworthy; he’s pushed his hood back and his sleeves up in his desire to provide clues.
‘She was carrying nothing?’ Bright looks as if he might shake them both, and Gibby half steps between them.
‘Nothing.’ Now they’re both in agreement. She had empty hands and her head was hung down, except when she was checking the clock, and her feet stumbled, and stumbled.
Suicide Club, The Page 35
