“Even older then.”
While they spoke, Nathan gradually picked his way over towards the car. He was buttoning up his coat. He had his book tucked under his arm.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.
“I’m heading off,” he said, “it’s very late.”
He stood next to the car and ran his hand over the roof. “Why didn’t you just punch your mother to start off with and leave my car out of it?” he said tersely.
“Don’t piss around with me,” Lily said coldly, “if you haven’t already noticed, I don’t have much of a sense of humour.”
“But I had noticed,” Nathan said gently, “because it seems such a pity.”
“I’m going in,” Lily announced, pushing herself up and then staggering over towards the house.
Connie tried to inspect the roof for damage. “Did she dent it?”
“No.”
“Will you drive home now?”
“Probably.”
Nathan walked around to the driver’s side of the car and opened the door. “I really didn’t mean to upset you before, Nathan,” Connie said suddenly.
“But you did,” Nathan replied cheerfully, “and people always do.”
He climbed inside the car, slammed his door shut and started up the engine.
What had he meant, Connie wondered, that I did hurt him or that I did mean to hurt him? Which was it? And what was the difference between the two?
Nathan put the car into reverse. Connie frowned, then took a few steps back to allow him space to manoeuvre.
∨ Wide Open ∧
Forty-Seven
Jim awoke to the sound of the fridge door closing. It seemed that he’d fallen asleep after all, against the entire sum of his good intentions, curled up in a ball at the end of the sofa. He unwound himself slightly, feeling stiff. His neck hurt. He moved his arm and realized that he’d been covered in a blanket. He felt warm. When he opened his eyes a fraction he saw that it was light outside, light inside. And he could no longer hear the rain falling. Only seagulls and the sea. He closed his eyes again. He heard Ronny moving around in the kitchen. He imagined him making breakfast for the two of them. This image was so sweet, so conjugal, so incongruous, that he smiled and for a brief moment allowed himself to dwell on it.
Shuffling. How much later? Hours? Minutes? Seconds? Jim’s eyes shot open and he yanked himself up. The prefab was silent. But he’d detected…what? The door closing? He looked over towards the window and his heart began hammering. He threw off the blanket and walked to the door. He opened it. He peered out into the bright morning. It was brisk. There was a sharp wind. What time was it? Still early.
The beach was empty. But when he looked out and along, sharply, to his right, he thought he saw something white…just fluttering. In the distance. A sail? A gull? A plastic bag? No. No. Bigger. Far away. Something bright and light and strangely reflective. Then it struck him like a giant breaker. The white suit. It was the white suit! Bleached. Plastic. Lily-palie. Alabaster. The spacesuit. It was the white suit. And the light was glancing off it. And the wind was blowing. And it was Ronny wearing it. It was Ronny.
Jim gave a low, wounded gasp, then started running.
♦
I was lost, Nathan told himself, but now I am found. He climbed out of the car to stretch his legs and glanced around him. His feet were numb. He had yet to work out whether he’d stayed because he’d wanted to or because, finally, he hadn’t known where the hell he was heading.
He was parked up in a dead-end, close to a desolate-looking fenced-off cluster of holiday chalets. The prefabs were a short distance behind him. The nature reserve lay ahead. The road just stopped. It was a true dead ending.
And it had been the longest of nights. The car had been cold. He’d run the engine, intermittently, but then he’d noticed the petrol gauge leaning eerily towards the empty mark. After that he’d just shivered, his coat spread ineffectually across his knees.
A short while after five the sun came up. Over the sea. And Nathan had stared at it. He’d thought about himself. He’d thought about Ronny. He’d thought about Connie. She was right, he reasoned, about angels usually being boys. She was right about the masturbating Jesus. He tried to understand what it meant, this rightness. In the end he resolved that it meant only two things, and even they weren’t mutually exclusive.
The first? Well, at some level, some subtle level, it seemed as if maybe he’d always known that the angel was a boy. Perhaps, he thought, the evil really is inside me. Deep inside me like I always feared it would be. That unexplored dread was a real dread. That unbidden terror, a true terror. Yet when he faced this possibility, head on, a wall rose up inside him, same as always, and his thoughts turned away.
The second thing. The other option? He tried to focus again. The second possibility was that this whole mess was not about love or infatuation or art or anything, but about God. God. Perhaps he had finally found his own true salvation in the strange, tarnished image of this masturbating Christ? This idiosyncratic Jesus, this human Jesus, this sensual, unashamed, uninhibited Jesus could surely understand and encompass all those black, unthinkable feelings which tormented and dogged and plagued him. This worldly Jesus would not turn away from sin. No. He would embrace it. Here, in this dark saviour, Nathan told himself, lay a final, complete and absolute understanding.
This was a bold Jesus, after all. This was the fearless Jesus who would, without thinking, have forced Little Ronny to leave his father’s wicked house. This Jesus would have damned the consequences. This was the Jesus who could forgive himself anything, and in so doing, forgive others all of their sinning.
I cannot get over what has happened, Nathan told himself, but I can let go of it. I can simply let go of it. I can forgive. I can forgive myself. I can forgive Little Ronny. I can forgive Big Ronny. Yes. Even him.
And as the sun rose, Nathan felt something corresponding within him. Something hot. A nugget. Something rising. It burned inside of him. This is Jesus, Nathan told himself, this is God. And God was an enormous, infinite, all-consuming blankness.
Nathan closed his eyes and felt himself transformed into a state of total rapture as the sheer, clean, white spirit of the good father filled him. At last, he sighed, at long last, I am truly lifted.
♦
She hadn’t opened the box. If I open it, she thought furtively, then I’m merely replacing one bad thing with another. I have to hold back, like Ronny said, just this once. I have to turn away. She wondered, idly, as she fell to sleeping, whether growing up was simply about relinquishing everything of value. Dreams, fears, expectations. This cynical concept appealed to her. But she didn’t relinquish the box, just the same. She closed her eyes and slept with her arms still curled like small, pale stamens, tightly and firmly around it.
♦
Another interminable night of not-quite-sleeping. Connie half-dreamed that she saw her father sobbing, elbows up, head down, at the kitchen table. She was a little girl again, at home, and had accidentally walked in on him. Daddy? He’d lifted his head as she approached, and pretended that he’d not been crying after all. I’ll never forgive you! She found herself screaming. But she was screaming not at her father but at Lily, outside, by Nathan’s car, and Lily was Sara, only younger. I’ll never forgive you your awful betrayal! Never! Then she turned back to face her father again, picked up a dirty dishcloth and tried to blot his tears with it. But his tears were blood, not water. His eyes were red and they were bleeding.
Shit!
Connie sat up and scrabbled around in the sleeve of her jumper for a tissue. Her nostrils were burning. Her throat was dry. She blew her nose, swung her feet out of bed, then pulled on her trousers and her shoes. It was morning. At last. She crept through the house and out into the world. She began walking.
♦
Ronny was not thinking. He was counting. All the way along the beach, a sharp left turn, then up over a dune, past the chalets and into the reserve.
To his right, the river and the fields, to his left, the extensive, desolate swampy yellow of the salt flats. He picked up pace when he saw them.
It was difficult walking in the white suit. It was difficult inhaling. It was difficult hearing anything except his own breaths and the thoughts he was thinking. The counting. He had only so much time. He did not notice Nathan standing by his car. He did not hear Jim calling. Everything was slow and calm and self-contained. He walked on, along the flats and out towards the sea.
Outside, in the world, Jim was running and shouting and waving his arms. “Stop him!” he yelled, “just stop him!”
He wanted to pick up pace, he wanted to, but his feet kept sinking in the sand like they were lead weighted. He couldn’t move.
Nathan turned and saw his brother, far away, in the distance. He curved his hands around his lips to form a fleshy megaphone. “It’s nothing,” he shouted, “he can’t possibly sink in that suit. It’s plastic. It’ll simply fill with air.”
But Jim kept running, onwards and then upwards, not even seeing Nathan, not even hearing him.
Ronny found the proper place. He felt a dampness around his ankles. It was wetter here than he’d anticipated. But that didn’t matter, did it? No. He shook his head. He opened his right hand and stared at what it contained through the clear plastic visor of his face mask. Nestled inside his palm was a butter pat. A small square. Innoffensive. Hard. Cold. Gold-wrapped.
He lifted his visor to render his mouth accessible. He placed the butter pat on to his tongue, then shoved it down into his throat with a white-gloved finger until it lodged hard and deep and fast inside there. He didn’t gag.
I really want to die, he thought. Then he lay down on the grass, feeling the wind blowing against his clothing, hearing it like a giant, imaginary audience roaring along to this, his final act; laughing and cheering and whooping and jeering. All in equal measure.
♦
Connie had seen him, in the distance, white-suited like an astronaut. She’d kept on walking, vaguely perplexed, but her mind was full of other things. Then she heard something. But it was so faint and far away. Like the sad cry of a curlew. A kind of wailing. Finally she saw Jim, and behind him she saw Nathan. Jim was running. But not Nathan. He walked. Connie stopped. She turned towards the salt flats. Then who…?
The white figure lay down. He rested his hands across his chest. He relaxed. Then his head, with a terrible gradualness, turned slowly, gently sideways. How many seconds passed before Jim reached him? Thirty? Forty? More? And when Jim did reach him, Connie took it as a signal to start walking again. Fast and then faster.
On her way down towards the shore she met Nathan.
“Is it Ronny?” she panted. Nathan nodded, but he didn’t pick up pace. Connie ran on and down towards the others. Jim was screaming. He’d ripped off Ronny’s white helmet and his visor. He was yanking at his head.
“What did you do? What did you do? Where are you? What did you do?”
Ronny’s eyes were closed as though he was sleeping. He did not respond to Jim’s violent admonishments. Connie fell to her knees. “Leave him!” she shouted. “Let him go!”
She pulled Ronny’s eyelids open. She saw only whites.
“What’s happened? Tell me!”
Jim was howling. “I don’t know. I don’t know. He put his hand to his mouth. I saw him put his hand to his mouth and then he lay down.”
Connie prised Ronny’s jaw open. She tried to look past his tongue. Then she placed both her hands on the outside of his neck and squeezed gently.
“I think I feel something…I think he swallowed something.”
She plunged her hand into his mouth and attempted to force her fingers down his throat.
Nathan finally reached them. He said nothing. He crouched down and took hold of Ronny’s arm but couldn’t gain access to his wrist, so he pulled the plastic suit open at the front and then ripped it across and over his shoulder, yanking up Ronny’s hand to feel for a pulse. He couldn’t locate one. He kept on trying.
“No pulse,” he said eventually, and dropped Ronny’s arm. “He’s gone,” he said.
“No!” Jim shouted. “No, he isn’t dead! No, he isn’t dead! No, he isn’t, he isn’t…”
He started shaking uncontrollably. He jumped forward and began banging his full weight on to Ronny’s diaphragm.
“He is dead,” Connie whispered, withdrawing her hand. In it she held a small, gold butter pat, still frozen. She started to cry. “Oh fuck. He is dead.”
When she’d removed her hand from his mouth, Ronny’s jaw sagged open. She tried to close it. It wouldn’t close.
“He isn’t dead,” Jim yelled again, and continued pummelling. Nathan leaned forward and calmly back-handed his face, very hard. Once, twice.
Jim gasped. He put his hands to his cheeks. He stared at his brother, dumbfounded.
“Pull the suit off,” Nathan said. “Help me.”
He yanked the suit away from Ronny’s skinny torso while the two of them watched him. The suit was already muddy. Ronny’s legs were steeped in it.
“The gold watch I gave him,” Nathan said, “is it on him anywhere?”
“The gold watch?” Jim repeated blankly.
“Is it on him?” Nathan yelled.
Jim blinked. “I don’t know. I don’t. I think he broke it.”
He began rocking.
Nathan pulled the remainder of the suit off, then placed his hands under Ronny’s armpits and yanked him out several feet further towards the sea. As he yanked, Ronny’s shoes came loose.
“What are you doing?” Jim sprang back to life again. “Leave him alone! Not his shoes! Leave him, Nathan! Leave him!”
He scrambled forwards, into the mud, grabbing one of the shoes and trying vainly to fit it back on to Ronny’s foot again. “Not his shoes! He never took off his shoes!”
“I’m saving you,” Nathan yelled, his face puce with both his rage and his exertions. “I’m saving you. Don’t you understand? Get away from here! Go away!”
Connie saw Nathan sinking up to his thighs in mud and then Ronny’s pale, limp body sliding gently into it. Jim was deep in mud himself and flailing around helplessly.
“Don’t do this,” he screamed, “just leave him. Just leave him alone. Just leave him!”
But Ronny’s body sank anyway until eventually Connie stared vainly at where it once had been because it was as if she’d only ever dreamed it there. Pieces of the suit began shifting in the wind across the flats.
“Get those, Connie,” Nathan pointed.
She found herself doing as he’d instructed. She gathered up the helmet and visor, the suit, one of the shoes. Jim still held the other.
The two brothers faced each other. No words were exchanged between them. Then Nathan turned and began wading back towards drier land. Back to his car. Back to his life. Everything is finally over, he thought thankfully, everything is dead, everything is finished. He took a long, slow, deep breath, and even as he began to exhale it, he was well on his way to forgiving himself.
♦
First she carried the cardboard box outside and placed it down gently, then she returned to her room and began piling armloads of stuff on to the counterpane of her bed. All the clothes from her cupboards and her drawers, all the crazy mementoes she’d accumulated, all her schoolbooks and folders, all her toys and her knick-knacks. Even the few posters on her walls. Then she pulled each of the four corners of the counterpane together and dragged the whole giant bundle out of the house and into the farmyard.
With a touch of disarming level-headedness, Lily positioned herself a sensible distance away from the outbuildings, the farmhouse itself and the animals. She went and grabbed a selection of logs from under the woodpile. The drier, she reasoned, the better. In the kitchen she found meths and matches.
♦
Sara awoke still clutching her aching jaw. It hurt when she moved it. She gently ground her teeth together, relishing the dart of discomf
ort this generated, then lay back limply, listening. All was quiet. She checked her bedside clock. She checked it again. She climbed out of bed, rather creakily and walked down the corridor. Connie’s bedroom door was ajar, her bed was unmade and empty. Lily’s door was wide open. All her things were gone. Is there something about me? Sara wondered quietly, which makes people keep on disappearing? Then she turned, clumped downstairs at full tilt and bellowed out Lily’s name into the downy silence.
♦
Lily yanked off the clothes she wore, layer by layer, until she stood naked next to the smoke and the flames.
“Look at me!” she screamed, up into the sky, straight into the heavens. “LOOK AT ME! I AM ABSOLUTELY BLOODY GORGEOUS!”
She started laughing, clutching at her ribs, then bent over and picked up the cardboard box. The fire was burning fiercely. The wind was blustering and changing direction. One moment the smoke flew one way, the next, the other. Lily inhaled some of it and began coughing. Through her tears she saw the farmhouse door opening. Through the flames she espied her mother. She whooped with glee, sprang into the air, threw the box on to the blistering fire and then with a final spectacularly unholy yodel, she turned on her dirty heels and ran.
♦
Nathan had gone. Neither Connie nor Jim had moved an inch. They each clutched one of Ronny’s shoes. Eventually Connie held out her hand to him. “Come back,” she said, “get out of that mud.”
“Death is my gift,” Jim whispered hoarsely, not moving. “Don’t you see? Death is all I ever bring.”
“He swallowed a butter pat,” Connie said, refusing to acknowledge Jim’s declaration, opening her hand to show him the little gold packet. “Isn’t that funny?”
Jim stared at her, but it was as if he couldn’t quite see her.
“Do you know how badly someone must want to die to kill themselves that way,” she asked gently, “with a butter pat?”
Jim said nothing.
“Please come out of there,” she said kindly. “Look. I have his other shoe.”
When Connie mentioned the other shoe, Jim focused in on it and then immediately began wading back again. She offered him the shoe. He took it.
Thames Gateway 01; Wide Open Page 27
