Adam's Peak

by Heather Burt

  “Have you ever thought about where this water goes, Isobel?”

  “What if I say it goes to England?”

  His mouth curved in an enigmatic smile, but he said nothing. Isobel crouched to dip her hands.

  “I know this pond feeds the stream,” she said. “And the stream ends up in the Clyde River, and that ends up in the Firth of Clyde. Some of this pond water might go all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.” She hesitated. “Maybe some of it will wash up on a beach in America. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Patrick stepped back into the tall grass. Against the pinkish-blue sky, he cut an imposing if slightly scruffy figure.

  “Aye, it would.”

  He went to the tree, unzipped his kit bag, and pulled out a blanket, which he spread over the lumpy ground, over the very spot where Isobel had stretched out earlier.

  “Come sit and have a wee dram,” he said, uncapping the bottle.

  Isobel sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees. The cramps were still there, but bearable. She reached for the bottle and took a drink, basting the inside of her mouth until its surfaces burned then numbed. Patrick extracted a limp cigarette and a book of matches from his pocket, pinched the cigarette between his lips, and cupped his hands to light it. He leaned back against the tree, exhaling a grey-white cloud.

  “I envy that water,” he said.

  Isobel held back a laugh. “What do you mean?”

  “It travels,” he said, intensely serious. “It goes places. You said yourself, this pond water could end up in America. It could go anywhere.” He took a puff then passed the cigarette to Isobel. “That’s what I envy. That freedom. I’m sure your dad could give me a grand working life, Isobel, but what I really want is to experience other places. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I know,” she said. “I’d do anything to go to America. I think about it every day.”

  She took a puff, then another drink.

  “It wouldn’t be America for me,” Patrick said. “I want to see the exotic places of the world. China, India, Ceylon ...”

  “Ceylon is a lovely name,” Isobel mused. “Very romantic,” she then added, awkwardly, for it wasn’t the sort of thing she was in the habit of saying.

  Patrick took back the cigarette, and Isobel carried on drinking. It was like the lobbing of stones into the pond—a metronome to the conversation.

  “We could go together,” Patrick said. “Ceylon.”

  If he’d looked at her when he said it, she might have believed him. But his eyes were fixed on the end of his cigarette as he rolled a fragile point of ash against a stone he’d picked up from the ground.

  “And what would we do there?” she said.

  “I don’t know. That’s the beauty of it, you see. Anything is possible.”

  Isobel recapped the whisky bottle and swung it back and forth in front of the distant outline of her too-familiar town. She imagined herself on a gently tossing ship, a glimpse of tropical green on the horizon.

  “Let’s go then,” she said.

  Patrick coughed. “When?”

  “Now. Tomorrow.”

  She felt his unshaven chin on her neck.

  “I cannae arrange it for tomorrow, Isobel, but we’ll go.” He took a last puff then stubbed the cigarette on the stone. “In the meantime there’s another place we could go,” he said, his voice strangely quiet, almost breathless. “If you fancy it.”

  The whisky bottle slipped from Isobel’s hand, landing with a thud and a slosh, then rolled out of reach toward the pond. She wasn’t sure what he meant, but as he fumbled with the top button of her blouse, the heel of his rough, square hand pushing against her breast, she once again felt the strange rippling inside, the same alien surge. She would rather have talked with him about Ceylon. She repeated the name to herself, imagined her ship drawing closer, and as Patrick nestled in and pulled the blanket over their bodies she fixed her mind on the green horizon.

  BY THE TIME THE AWKWARD ACT WAS DONE and she’d sacrificed her blue knickers to wipe up the ambiguous blood, the sun had dipped low. Patrick lit another cigarette and shook the match violently. Isobel leaned back against the tree, the blanket tight around her shoulders.

  “I can’t go home like this,” she said. “I’m drunk and I look a mess. They’ll murder me.”

  Patrick brushed her cheek with his finger. “You can tidy up at my place. Mum won’t say anything.”

  They set off back to town in silence. Wearily Isobel staggered down the path, heavy with the sense that she was no longer alone in herself. That her treacherous body was not only occupied by strange forces but that those forces had tangled her up in other lives, lives she could know only in their clumsy, messy, physical manifestations. She wanted to vomit up the entire day, or shit it out—anything to relieve her essential self of its burdens. Halfway to the road she thought she might indeed spew, and she stumbled into a knot of shrubs and doubled over. But though she heaved and coughed, nothing came up. She glanced over her shoulder at Patrick, hovering uselessly on the path, then she thought of Alastair, of life with Alastair, and allowed herself to consider, as she’d not yet done, that it might be ideal. She would be paired up—something that only girls with serious plans, like Margaret, could easily forego. Yet at the same time she’d be free, for Alastair Fraser would not invade her. Nor would he excite those strange forces inside her. He would take her away from Stanwick, far from its confusions and commitments, and he would let her be. Life with him would be dull—duller, perhaps, than life in Stanwick—but unlike life in Stanwick, life with Alastair would not be all-consuming. They would live side by side in a quiet flat, and outside that small, quiet space would be the city. Montreal. Not as big as New York, but big enough. A place where she could walk down her street and not know a soul ... where anything could happen.

  14

  RUDY LAY ON HIS BED, propped against pillows, in the air stream of the fan. Next to him his empty lunch dishes were piled on a tray, attracting flies. In the three weeks that had passed since the events on President Street he’d grown accustomed to doing nothing. The migrations of insects across the floor, the rhythms of cousin Bernadette’s chopping and sweeping, the shifting light and shadows across the painting of Adam’s Peak, which he’d asked Bernadette to hang on his bedroom wall ... these things occupied him for hours. The causes of his inertia weren’t straightforwardly medical, of course. But in the light of consciousness he could pretend.

  Sleep was a different story. Gory, apocalyptic images came to him in his dreams and were stubbornly slow to dissolve when he woke, heart pounding, at the edge of the bed. Even worse were the pursuits. Night after night, he followed slender young men through labyrinths of endless complexity—city streets, parkades, school corridors—repeatedly glimpsing but never catching his quarry. Sometimes he’d get close enough that his dream-self would cry out breathlessly in hope and relief. Desperately he’d lunge at the young man, but whatever he managed to grab onto—a sneaker, a sleeve—would slip off into his hand, and he’d cry out again. If he didn’t wake himself up, he would lurch dizzily, utterly lost in his maze, struggling to stay upright.

  He’d had no news of Kanda. Headmaster Muller had paid a visit to the hospital, but the subject of the boy hadn’t come up. Muller talked of Cambridge the whole time, and in any case Rudy wasn’t ready; he allowed no news to be good news. And now, in the dull tranquility of Aunty Mary’s bungalow, he allowed himself to forget what had happened on President Street that day, or, rather, to speak of it—to Bernadette, to the neighbours who occasionally dropped by—as if it were a thing apart. It was only when Bernadette would leave him to go home to her family, only as he imagined his cousin’s bus ride through the outskirts of the city, the stop at the supermarket that she frequently made, the walk from the market to her house, that the bomb would re-explode in his imagination.

  Bernadette, Aunty Sheryl’s eldest daughter, had been summoned by Aunty Mary. For the first ten days or so she’d stayed ful
l-time, a live-in nurse and housekeeper. Now she spent two or three hours every couple of days, cleaning (Rudy couldn’t imagine what, for he hardly left his bedroom), filling the refrigerator with portions from her own family’s meals, or cooking up fresh lunches, violently spiced, which she served to him on a tray. At first he hadn’t thought to refuse her help. It became obvious to him as soon as he left the hospital that hobbling to the bathroom on his crutches would mark the limit of his independence. But as his condition improved, and he ventured to think about matters other than his own injuries, Bernadette’s presence began to baffle and embarrass him.

  She came in for the lunch tray. She was thirty-five or thirty-six, a once-slender woman who’d gone through three pregnancies and apparently retained a few pounds from each. She had thick, layered hair that fell to her shoulders, a broad, full-lipped smile, and a penchant for tight-fitting T-shirts and jeans. The latter was the main source of Rudy’s embarrassment. Despite his pains and terrors, he harboured fantasies of peeling away his cousin’s clothes, squeezing her breasts, running his hands down her hips. Fucking her. He’d tried to convince himself that the fantasy was a product of circumstance and that he would have lusted after any reasonably attractive woman who came to look after him and who gave him jasmine-scented sponge baths, as Bernadette had done. He told himself it was the dual transgression of adultery and borderline incest that was turning him on. But the truth wasn’t so easy. He’d never been with a Sri Lankan woman before—he found her exotic.

  “How was the lunch?” she said, leaning over him for the tray.

  Rudy stared at the gold sequined flowers on the front of her T-shirt. “Delicious.”

  “Not too spicy?”

  “Yes. But don’t worry. I’m building up my tolerance.”

  Bernadette shook her head, and the hoops in her ears danced back and forth. “You should tell me when it’s too much. I’m always forgetting you’ve been away from our food for so long.”

  She headed for the door, but Rudy, restless and bored, summoned her back with the only conversation starter he could muster.

  “Hey, Bernadette? Do you remember when we used to call you Bernie?”

  She turned. “Oh, God! No one has called me that in years!” Giggling, she set the tray on a chair. “I used to hate that name so much, but now I’m doing the same thing with my own kids.” She numbered them off on her fingers. “Rashelle is Shelly, Angelo is Angie, Dominic is Nicky. Crazy, no?”

  Rudy shrugged. “Not really. Seems affectionate to me.”

  Bernadette flashed him a smile. “You’re right. I should have understood that when I was little. You all weren’t being mean when you called me Bernie. I hope my children understand that.” Suddenly her eyes widened. “Oh, this is a coincidence!”

  “What?”

  “The kids in your family are girl-boy-boy and so are mine! Isn’t that strange?”

  He didn’t think it was much of anything, but he smiled and said, “Uh-huh.” The conversation was bordering on pointlessness, and although he suspected Bernadette would have been willing to carry on with it, he hoisted himself up on the pillows and gave his cousin what he hoped was a meaningful look.

  “So, tell me, Bernadette. Why on earth were you willing to come and take care of me like this? We haven’t seen each other in eons; I’m practically a stranger to you.”

  Bernadette shook her head; she seemed embarrassed. “It was no trouble, Rudy. There’s another girl at work who was able to take my cases when you were just out of hospital, and Lionel has been spending more time with the children.”

  For a moment Rudy said nothing. He was mortified to learn that Bernadette had a job—one with Cases, whom she’d abandoned for his sake. To ask her now where she worked, after spending nearly a month in her company, would be hopelessly awkward, so he pushed on.

  “I know you’ve been able to make arrangements—and I can’t tell you how grateful I am—but what I don’t get is why you would do it, for me. Like I said, I’m a stranger. I was expecting to hire someone.”

  Bernadette frowned. “You’re not a stranger, Rudy.”

  “Virtually.”

  “No, no. Mama is always telling me what’s happening with you and Susie and Adam. She and your Aunty Mary talk frequently. It’s not the same as speaking to you in person, but I always know the important events.”

  “You know the important events in a lot of people’s lives,” he said, “but would you put your own life on hold for them?”

  Bernadette wagged her finger at him. “You’re family. That’s different.”

  “I guess.”

  He felt suddenly as if he were arguing with his aunt—as if he and his cousin were speaking different languages. He pictured her out on his grandfather’s lawn with the other girl cousins and wondered how far back the division could be traced. It struck him that growing up in Sri Lanka might have made him an altogether different person, and the idea of this other-Rudy who never came to be was unsettling. He slumped back against the wall. Bernadette picked up the tray and balanced it on her hip while her free hand collected a towel and a pair of shorts from the foot of the bed.

  “Any more washing?” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Please.” He scratched furiously at a mosquito bite on his thigh. “I’ve got plenty of clean stuff left.”

  “It’s no worry. I just put your things in with ours.”

  “Just leave it,” he snapped, startling himself. There followed a moment of hot silence. Then he met Bernadette’s eyes and his core began to tremble. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  She came to him solemnly. “It’s all right. Better this happens while you’re awake, no?”

  “While I’m—” He sighed. “You know about the dreams?”

  “It’s not important.” Bernadette brushed his hair from his forehead, a patient, maternal gesture. “Any more washing?”

  Rudy pointed his chin in surrender. “There’s a couple of T-shirts over there. Thanks.”

  He watched her as she crouched down for the shirts, keeping her upper body straight, geisha-like, so as not to upset the dishes on the tray. Gradually the fear and shame in his gut were tempered by a dull throb of desire. He didn’t share Bernadette’s sense of cousinship, wasn’t worthy of it really, but he promised himself he’d ask Aunty Mary, next time she called, to fill him in on the important facts of cousin Bernie’s life.

  At the doorway, she turned back to him. “Your friend from school is still coming this afternoon?”

  “Nisal? Yes.”

  “I’ll leave after washing up then.” She fixed her eyes on him. “Remember what the doctor said. Off your feet as much as possible. You overdid it last week.”

  Rudy made a shallow bow. When Bernadette had disappeared into the kitchen, he reached for the bottle of painkillers on the bedside table.

  His collision with the three-wheeler in the wake of the explosion had cracked his pelvis and left him with a map of bruises, vaguely resembling Britain, so the nurses had told him, across his lower back. He’d suffered a mild concussion, which had been the cause of greatest concern initially, but it was the pelvic injury that was keeping him bedridden. He remembered little of the ambulance ride or of his arrival at the hospital. Thanks, he suspected, to Mr. Wettasinghe’s interventions, he’d been promptly examined, then delivered from the pandemonium of the emergency room to a quiet ward occupied by elderly men with chronic ailments. The room was stale and monastic; the nurses wore starched white dresses and pointed caps. Spaced out on morphine, he slept for many hours between the cool, papery sheets, waking only occasionally to the ministrations of his nurse.

  Early the next morning, he asked to be wheeled to the telephone down the hall, where he placed a collect call to his father. It was the first task he’d attempted since hauling himself across the pavement, and the limitations of his body surprised him. His arm immediately grew sore holding the receiver; his foggy mind struggled to remember
the phone number. When his father answered, the familiar voice was jarring.

  “So, you’re fine, son,” he said. “We were concerned when we heard the news of that bloody bombing, but I told Mary you would have been in school.”

  Rudy inhaled. “Actually, Dad, I was in the city. I saw it happen.” A predictable silence followed. “They had to take me to the hospital.” He tried to sound alert, alive. “I have a cracked pelvis, but it’s not serious. I’m okay. I’ll be home in a couple of days.”

  “You’re coming home?” Alec said.

  Again Rudy took a breath. “I mean Wattala home. Aunty’s place. But, Dad, tell Aunty she doesn’t need to come back for me. I’m fine.”

  “Broken pelvis, you say? What happened?” In the background Rudy could hear his aunt, her own frantic questions going unanswered as Alec pressed him further. “What were you doing in the city? It was a school day, no?”

  “Cracked pelvis, Dad. A three-wheeler bumped into me.” He paused. “I was on a prep. I went downtown to do some errands.”

  “My God. Not both of you,” his father muttered.

  “Both of who?” Rudy said, then he understood. He softened his voice. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m not badly hurt. I’ll be fine.” His nurse was leaning against the wall, examining her fingernails. He turned away from her. “They’re just being extra-cautious with me, ’cause I’m a foreigner. I guess it looks bad that I was caught up in this.”

  The conversation shifted briefly to the details of the event, then Rudy spoke to his aunt. His lies to her weren’t too extravagant: yes, he could walk; just a small limp and a few bruises; he’d be back at work soon. When Aunty sent Bernadette to visit him in the hospital, he was found out, of course, but Bernadette had made it clear she had everything under control.

  As his cousin washed the lunch dishes, Rudy’s thoughts drifted from his own hospital stay to Susie’s maternity ward quarters, the last hospital room he’d suffered before his recent ordeal. He remembered sitting in the vinyl armchair at the foot of the bed, holding the baby and staring with a vague mournfulness at his sister. For it seemed just then that Susie, her long hair mussed, dark circles under her eyes, had become a different person. A mother, a stranger. Even Dad and Adam had seemed different. Somehow the pink-faced, crazy-haired baby in Rudy’s arms had changed them all, shifted their very identities, and Rudy had found himself stupidly resenting the tiny creature for the imposition.