Loss of Separation

by Conrad Williams

  'Take me to the place where you found them.'

  'What, now?'

  'It's light enough.'

  'I don't have a boat.'

  'Let's worry about that later.'

  The rain had stopped when we went outside, the wind's threat receded. I was still mumbling and grumbling to put her off - it was warm and cosy in her flat, despite all the grim scribblings - but she seemed to be one of those people who lock on to an idea and refuse to let go, like the jaws of a pit bull. Light scored the sky; great streaks of ochre parting the night, widening, pulling it apart. The sea was flat. Massive oil tankers on the horizon looked like tiny cardboard cut-outs on a child's picture.

  I was bone tired. The cold had not entirely been massaged out of my legs by the radiators in Amy's flat; now it raced back as if invited. There was movement down on the beach as we reached the stone steps above the promenade café and began to gingerly descend. An early-morning jogger perhaps, a brief flash of white, lumbering and stuttering over the uneven beach? A plastic bag blown by the wind? By the time we'd made it down to the sand, it was gone. A tree branch skinned of bark, polished and nude, was a limb pointing back to the marshes, as if it were trying to get me to return to the car, urge me back to sleep so that I might wake up to find everything was good again, how it should be.

  'Who's Charlie?' she asked.

  'He's a fisherman. He's lived here all his life. He sat with me a lot in hospital after I was found. Talked to me. I owe him my life.'

  'Did you go out far?'

  'Pretty far, yeah. Although you could still see the lighthouse. What about this boat? We're going to have to charter a trip. Not cheap.'

  'We don't need a boat.'

  We made our way along the sand until the light from the lighthouse was flaring periodically above our heads. She got me to stand with my back to the sea, looking up at the large, brilliant lens under the dome.

  'Look at the lighthouse for a few seconds. Then I want you to close your eyes and think about what you saw out there, on the water. Let whatever it is that's in the dark make itself known to you.'

  I didn't like the sound of that. She had her back to me, to the lighthouse, but the reflected shots of light from the sea, and the paling sky, turned her eyes into something inhuman. It was like watching something failed but dangerous trying to learn the skill of mimicry to better its chances at getting close to its prey.

  To avoid this, I did as she asked and closed my eyes, even though it left me exposed to her. She isn't the threat here, I chided myself, although in answering that question, I'd posed myself another. I'd admitted to myself that there was a threat. I just didn't know what shape it had assumed.

  I was back on the water but I wasn't aware of Charlie behind me - it was as if he was an actor awaiting his cue in the wings - or even the boat beneath my feet. I might have been little more than a disembodied eye, hovering above the waves, a camera filming a dramatic documentary.

  I thought of the sea giving up its secrets. The bulging net. The little cluster of clean white skulls like a clutch of hideous eggs at the centre of all those scales and tentacles and slime. I heard again, impossibly, the distant thunder of horses' hooves. The same pattern as before: a strong, insistent canter and a ghost at its heels, much weaker, yet faster. I looked around but there was nothing but water. It must be thunder, then; weird, syncopated thunder. But there were no great stairs of cloud: only clear sky stretching to the horizon.

  I heard the sound of those skulls skittering across the boards, saw the gleaming spheres and opened my eyes to see them represented in Amy's eyes, which were rolled back in their sockets. She was clutching the lapels of my coat. Her mouth was open and I saw the ring of her throat relax and contract as if she were about to gag. She was as exposed and as intimate as at the moment of an orgasm or a death rattle. I tried to shake her out of it but she was lost to whatever had unwrapped itself in her mind, or that I had passed on.

  Then she returned, her eyes dropping back into the sockets of her face like ghastly slot machine windows.

  'Are you all right?' I asked.

  She turned and spat into the sand. Black blood.

  'Christ,' I said. And then, again, with more urgency: 'Are you all right?'

  She nodded, although such a movement in her seemed anything but positive. 'Give me a minute.'

  I slowly coaxed her back to the stone revetment and sat her down on its cold, hard edge. She didn't seem to mind.

  'What was all that about?'

  'There were deaths here,' she said. 'Many, many deaths.'

  Her face was threatening to collapse. There was deep woe underpinning her voice. Not the melodramatic stuff you see in attention-seekers bemoaning their crap marriages or crap jobs, but the kind of near panic that people can find themselves in when hit by bad news that they can do absolutely nothing about.

  'We already know this,' I said. 'There was a huge naval battle out there. Heavy losses on both sides. Bodies were washing up on the beaches for days afterwards.'

  She gripped my hand so forcibly I cried out.

  'There were others,' she said. 'Others that suffered that day. All of the children were taken. Their parents watched them die.'

  37

  Paul... he is considerate lover. He takes time with me, because I find it hard to reach orgasm. Just like reaching. Stretching out arms. Tip-toe. Trying to get hand into cookie jar. I don't always get there, and he is upset by this, but I tell him not to be. I get as much pleasure out of seeing him climax as coming myself. I knew he would be gentle with me. He has good control of himself, unlike some lovers, selfish, racing to be finished. It's like he holds reins, can steady himself if it looks as though he is about to lose himself to the moment. His hands are soft, they were soft. He had beautiful hands, before. His nails always clean. I used to hate the boys in Odessa, home from the factory, and they were clean, they smelled of soap, but their fingernails were disgusting.

  Paul. I wonder if he is still able to love me. He was so ruined. The doctors, they reassure me that everything is in full working order. Even if he ends up in wheelchair. We can still build family. Build family? Is that right? Like wall. Like house. And why not? Something secure and comforting. Somewhere to retreat to. Bosom of family. The heart, the hearth. Warm and safe. I remember in kitchen back home in Odessa, with my father, my dear Tato, just before he died. I don't remember face much, but I remember his arms around me as we sat by the logs burning in the stove. I remember the colour of his skin, and the hair poking out under the cuffs of his shirt. I remember his smell, and above all how comfortable he was. My tiny body was like last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was him. I fit him. I press my ear against his chest and hear his heart trotting along, strong and healthy, like horses on the beach at Tenderovskiy Isla

  Yak vas zvaty?

  Mene zvaty Tamara.

  My name is Tamara.

  I am learning English, thanks to Paul. Better English, not so formal as I remember at school. He has funny ways of saying things. I used to think everything was funny, every English person, when I first come here. All their words seem so stiff. It's like they ought to have lips like closed purse to be able to say anything. Paul used to pretend to be very posh English gent. He make me laugh. He said things like actors in black and white films. Terry-Thomas. George Sanders. Ralph Richardson. Received pronunciation. Queen's English. Plum in mouth. He used to copy this, pretend to twiddle waxed moustache. Oh, I say. You sir, are a cad and a bounder and I shall have satisfaction. What-what!

  Is that the door? Is he coming again? Will it be this time? Will it be fast?

  My father died when I was very little. He suffered a huge stroke while he was asleep in bed. Everyone said how this was good thing. Best way to go. But it bothered me throughout my childhood. I had terrible nightmares. How could they be sure he didn't suffer? Someone told me that you were doomed to spend the rest of eternity experiencing the moment of your death over and over again. I dreamed of him asleep, trapped
in sleep, while his brain betrayed him. I thought of him with his eyes sealed shut, his mouth sealed shut, unable to scream for help because the darkness and sleep held him prisoner. If only he had been awake, he might have been able to survive. I haven't slept well since then. I still don't. I found out there is a name for the fear of sleep. Somniphobia. That's me. I'm frightened to go to sleep. But now I'm frightened to be awake. I used to think that being asleep would bring me closer to my father, but it's unbearable. All I can dream of is his struggle against this invader that killed him, and I think, me too, Tato. I'm in same boat. I'm so tired, so stressed... I wonder if it will have... what is word? Detriment effect? I wonder if... but no, I won't think about that. I won't let it happen. Move on. Think of other things.

  Mene zvaty Tamara.

  I remember learning English at school. The teachers thought I was very good, a quick learner. But the only reason I concentrated so hard was because of one of the English teachers. I don't remember his name, but he had this awful mouth. It was like chopped liver. Purple and wet and big. His lips slid against each other, like worms mating, and his teeth didn't seem to be as fixed as ought to be in his gums. Maybe he had denture. But it was like he was self-conscious of this horror mouth, this horrible pit of teeth and spit, so he had grown large moustache to either try to hide it, or draw attention from it. But it was like big banner. People stared at him. It didn't help that his other features were so tiny and non-descript. He had little brown eyes and button nose. Really, if it wasn't for his mouth, hungry thing, like something wet and red you find in man's magazine, you'd think he was pixie.

  I learned English fast from him because I wanted to be anywhere but in his class. I did good homework because I didn't want him questioning me alone in his office. Sometimes he was near enough for me to be able to smell his mouth if I wanted to, but I breathed through my own mouth then, scared to smell something that made me feel sick, or scared.

  Feet on the steps.

  I imagine this man, The Man, I imagine his mouth is like that. Like a fox's. Wild and wide and meant for only terrible things. The Man has never whispered I love you. He has never kissed a cheek. He has never smiled.

  Chapter Nine

  Signals of Distress

  We huddled together on the stone for hours, it seemed, too scared, too cold to do anything else. By the time we unfolded ourselves, limbs cracking like so much kindling, the sun was bleeding over the edge of the planet and there were people on the beach. Joggers, beachcombers, fishermen. Old people. No children. It was as if there were no children left anywhere, as if they were a fanciful dream.

  We made our way back up to the village hub. There was a café open early for the fishermen. You could buy pints if you wanted, and I was sorely tempted, but I bought us hot, strong, sweet tea and we sipped it in the window, blasted hands wrapped around the chipped mugs, skin slowly changing colour from blue to livid white.

  I struggled to get any more out of Amy. She had had a shock. Her chin was glazed with blood. I didn't want to try to wipe it away in case I only worsened her predicament. Some job to be involved in, I thought, if you were squeamish like that. I thought again of how she had spat that red oyster from her lungs and wondered if she might have something more serious than slowly knitting bones and diabetes. She seemed unfazed by that, as if it were a common occurrence. Maybe it was some reaction to the things she was connecting with, a heaving-ho of bad stuff, like vomit from a belly writhing with bacteria.

  'What did you see?' I asked her. And then, thinking, maybe, she hadn't actually seen anything, I asked: 'What were they like? The ripples? The echoes?'

  But she only sipped her tea, or turned away to look out of the window at the whitened, fragile dawn. In profile it was easier to see her tears, clinging to her eyes like soft contact lenses, threatening to spill, but never quite making it that far. Her lip trembled whenever she opened her mouth to take in some more of the tea. This was over three hundred years ago, I wanted to say to her. How can it hit you so hard?

  'Something's not right,' she said. 'It's like finding fresh blood on a fossil. There's something not... sitting quite right.'

  I tried to pry, but she was closing down, withdrawing, a tapped barnacle on a ship's hull. I said I was leaving and offered to escort her home, but she ignored me, dabbing instead at a fresh trickle of blood from her nose. I didn't want to leave; I didn't like the idea of abandoning Amy in this state, but it was getting late. I had pills to take. I needed sleep. But first I was anxious to find out what had happened to Ruth.

  I walked the hundred yards or so to the bookshop. Vulcan was in the window, but the door was locked. I rang the bell. Nothing. I tried her on the phone. No answer. I tried Charlie's number. It rang and rang. I wondered how long I should leave it before calling the police. I thought of the car on the harbour path, imagined two bodies cooling in the boot and my fingerprints all over the doors. I suddenly wished I was back in the cockpit, many thousands of feet above the clouds, living my dream day upon day.

  I went back to the café but Amy was gone from the window. By the time I'd made it to the main road, I could not see her, but it didn't necessarily follow that she'd returned home.

  I stood for a moment, waiting for sense to land. I could try Tamara's old work colleague again, but our last conversation had presented me with a dead end. If she was covering for Tamara then I would not be able to get past her door. The only thing to do was go to Amsterdam. Try her at the apartment, even though there had been no response. Where else was there for her to go?

  I was walking, as if determined to get over there straight away. It felt right. If she was there, she would see for herself the lengths to which I was prepared to fight for her. I could see it on the news: Severely injured man risks paralysis to be with the one he loves. "When I saw him, I realised I'd made a mistake in leaving him like that. I never stopped loving him. He's shown me what a fool I was. I won't ever leave his side again."

  I made a few calls and, giddily, found myself booked on the overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam two nights hence. It was done. It had been so long since I'd been master of my own plight that I felt slightly guilty about it, as if I'd stolen a piece of chocolate from a child's birthday hoard. I didn't know whether to tell Ruth. Part of me dreaded the lecture I would get. More of the same about being cuckolded, about not being physically or mentally prepared for such a trip. But part of me relished it. I was taking back my life, scarred handful at a time. It was time to stop burning other peoples' secrets and start revealing some of my own.

  I found myself outside the Sailor's Reading Room, a museum that opened to the public for a limited time each day. There was a private reading room at the back where old sailors and fishermen were allowed to come and go as they pleased. An old boys' club. I suddenly wished I'd been a seaman more than an airman. It would be fascinating to sit in among those men and listen to their stories about terrifying storms, record-breaking hauls, superstitions. I rattled the handle; the museum was closed. But I could see movement in the back, beyond the public gallery of ancient manuscripts, diary entries, photographs and ships' logs; the arcane yet beautiful display of maritime gear: old sextants, porthole frames, divers' helmets. The room gleamed with a thick haze of dull brass and iron. The colour was almost heavy enough to touch; you might have to actually wade through the museum in order to see anything.

  There was a face against the glass in that back room. Heavily bearded, shaded by a dark cap. Inscrutable.

  I waved. The man held up a finger. Wait.

  He disappeared for a moment and then I sensed someone behind me. He was smiling, his beard split to reveal brown teeth studded in a mouth like tiny coconuts at a fairground shy.

  'Room's closed,' he said. He smelled of rum and tobacco and oil.

  'I was just checking the opening times,' I said.

  'Back later,' he said, and widened his eyes at me as if he'd passed on some great, secret knowledge.

  'But it's not open again today,'
I said.

  'Got keys,' he said. 'In charge.'

  I didn't want to come back if it meant being given a private tour by a smelly man who couldn't train his tongue beyond two words at a time, but since that morning, and the events shared with Amy, I'd grown more and more curious about the village's history. There were secrets in that water, or at the least, misdirections. I wanted to dive in.

  'Seven?' I asked.

  'Seven good,' he said.

  'What's your name?'

  'Name's Jake,' he said. He gave me another brown smile and backed off as if I was holding him at gunpoint. His odour was equally reluctant to leave me too. I carried it around with me for the rest of the afternoon.

  I was in two minds as to whether to head off to the junk shop to waste another hour or catch the bus to Breydon and Charlie's house, which struck me as being just one more dead end to smack my face against, when I noticed that the bookshop door was now open. Movement in the back room. It was Ruth. I changed tack and headed towards her, called her name. She made her way through the bookshop and stood at the threshold, barring my way.

  'Where have you been?' she asked.

  'Where have I been? What about you? You left me in the freezing cold in the middle of nowhere.'

  'You were in the car. At the harbour.'

  'I know where I was,' I said, and it was all I could do to keep the anger from my voice.

  'Hardly the middle of nowhere.'

  'It might as well have been. I had to walk back.'