by Claire North
“Again: why? If it’s not vengeance you want then I don’t see…” Her voice trailed off. I stared into my mug.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Then, “All thought is association and feedback,” she said.
I looked up, quickly, studying her face, but her eyes were in some other place, her mind contemplating a different path. “Loneliness is no more than a construction of ideas. I am lonely because I am not with people. I need to be with people to feel fulfilled. And in time you say: I am not with people, and yet I am fulfilled. I have my books, I have my walks, I have my routines, I have my thoughts, and though I am alone, I am not lonely. And in time you say: I have myself, my body and my mind, and people would intrude upon that, and I am lonely, and it is for the very, very best. It is a paradise. Do you know why I chose to be Byron?”
“No.”
“He lived a while in an Armenian monastery. He was as sexy a shagger as any of that lot, but for a while he chose… he wrote that there is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore. Do you know it?”
“There is a society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before
To mingle with the universe and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
She beamed. “You’ve read his stuff.”
“I read up while looking for you. I thought it might help.”
“And yet the opticians have it.”
“All the way.”
Her eyes returned now to me, her head turning slightly to the side. “You fear it, no? The dangers of being alone. Of having no one to help you find your path. No friend to say ‘you went a bit too far’, no lover to say ‘you could be tender with your words’, no? No boss to say ‘work harder’ and no shrink to say ‘work less’, no… no society, to tell you how to choose, or what to wear, no… no judgement, to help guide your own? You fear it?”
“Yes. I fear the fallibilities of my own reason.”
“Of course – yes, the madness that comes from a thought process that’s unchecked, from logic that is not logical, but isn’t told so, of course, very wise.”
“I impose disciplines upon myself, discourse, reason, knowledge…”
“To fill the place where society should be?”
“Yes. And to keep me sane. To help me see myself, as others might see.”
“Through the eyes of law, reason, philosophy?”
“Yes. What do strangers see, when they see me? They almost never tell, not the truth, and so I seek to understand them, that I might understand myself.”
“There’s your fallacy,” she interrupted, turning her body now so everything uncoiled, everything facing me. “There’s your mistake. You have a gift, Hope, one of the greatest ever given. You are outside it all; you are free of it.”
“Free of…”
“Of people. Of society. You have no need to conform, what’s the point? No one will thank you for it, no one will remember you, and so you have the freedom to choose your own path, your own humanity, to be who you want to be, not some puppet shaped by the TV and the magazines, by the advertising men, by the latest definition of work or play, by ideas of sex, gender, by—”
“Perfection?”
“By perfection. You choose your own perfect. You choose to be who you are, and the world cannot shape you, unless you permit it. The world cannot move you, unless it is by your own welcoming in. You are free, Hope. You are more free than anyone living.”
Silence a while. Then I said, “Is that why you killed them?” She leant back in her chair, disappointed, a huff of breath. “Is that why you wanted to destroy Perfection? To set people free?”
“We have sacrificed thought,” she replied flatly, voice hard, eyes steady. “We live in a land of freedom, and the only freedoms we can choose are to spend, fuck and eat. The rest is taboo. Loner. Slut. Weirdo. Faggot. Whore. Bitch. Druggie. Scrounger. Ugly. Poor. Muslim. Other. Hate the other. Kill the other. Aspire, as us, to be together, to become better, to become… perfect. Perfection. A unified ideal. Perfection: flawless. Perfection: white, rich, male. Perfection: car, shoe, dress, smile. Perfection: the death of thought. I programed the 206 to kill each other. If I have the chance, I will gather together every member of the 106 I can find, and make them eat each other whole.”
Her eyes, burning into mine, daring me, go on, speak.
I said, “I thought maybe…” And stopped. “I thought perhaps…” Stumbled on the words.
“Go on.”
“I thought maybe there was another kind of story here. I thought perhaps you had seen things or done things or things had been done – but that’s not it, is it? You destroyed Perfection because it needed to be destroyed. There’s no personal tragedy or ancient oath to be fulfilled. You saw a thing that was vile, and you took up arms against it. I think I could admire that, if things had worked out different.”
Silence.
The tea cooled in its cups, the wind blew off the sea.
Then, “I called Gauguin.”
Silence.
“Last night,” I added. “I told him everything.”
Silence.
“Why?” Incomprehension – I had never seen such a thing in her before, incomprehension, incredulity, barely contained, her fingers white, the veins standing out in the soft folds of her neck, her body shaking with its own stiffness. “Why?”
“Because… because…” I sucked in breath. “Because while I agree with you in almost every possible respect, about everything – Perfection, loneliness, freedom, power, choice – practically everything – I think there has to be a place where it stops. I think there has to be a moment when you turn round and permit yourself to be defined by the world that surrounds you. I am free. I choose to honour the freedom of those who live around me. I choose to honour them. I think your freedom does not do that.”
Silence.
Then she stood up, quickly, turned, poured the last of her tea into the sink, put the cup down on the side, turned, took a deep breath and exclaimed, in one fast burst:
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have a rest.
She stopped, fingers shaking at her sides, hauling down air, as if those few words had sucked the oxygen from her lungs. I put my mug down, rose to my feet, my eyes never leaving hers, and replied softly, “Hey Macarena.”
Silence.
She put her head on one side, looked to see if her words triggered anything more – obedience, perhaps, an openness to command – and when she saw no sign of it, she simply smiled and shook her head and said, “Shall we walk by the sea?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“It’s very beautiful round here, I think. When the light is right – when you can see the stars. Sometimes it takes my breath away. Sometimes it’s vile. It changes, moment to moment. Like…” She stopped, caught herself before her words ran away, smiled a shaking smile. “Like the present tense.”
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “We’ve got time.”
“I’ll get my coat.”
We walked.
She wore large pale brown boots and a thick dark green coat.
“Made in Stornoway – forget the hi-tech stuff, the Scots got all-weather gear five hundred years ago. Only other people who know what they’re doing are the Scandinavians, and even they’ve gone in for polymer rubbish and polarised glasses these days.”
I said nothing, and walked by her side, coat pulled tight around my chest, hands buried in my pockets. The sky grew heavier and flecks of freezing rain, desperate to be snow, began to fall, biting with fat white teeth where they struck exposed skin, pattering on my back.
The sea below exhaled like a troll, rattling stones as the water was sucked back into the deep, breaking breath where it burst against the cliffs. I could see the beauty in it now, the dark-on-dark-on-dark without end. Far away, a tanker crawled between the island and the mainland, heading north, towards Kirkwall and Lerwick, the Arctic Circle and the oil wells, belching fire across the sea.
“Gauguin said he wanted to marry you,” I said at last, raising my voice over the grasp of the wind.
She smiled. “He never asked.”
“But he was going to?”
“He never asked,” she repeated.
We kept walking, her cottage growing small and far away.
I said, “Are you going to run?”
“Run? From the Isle of Lewis, and John on his way? I suppose I could. There might be something to be done. But I doubt it. A refuge is a prison, by any other name.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About three years.”
“How did you pay for everything? The equipment, the experts, the passports, the—”
“I stole,” she explained simply. “It was necessary.”
We kept walking.
Below, the sea dropped away beneath the cliff, the seagulls perched beneath our feet. The waves crashed and the clouds raced across the sky, running on to an unknown rendezvous. The long grass hissed and the short stones bumped, bumped back against the wind, a Morse code of currents disrupted and reformed, thump thump goes the sea, bump bump goes the earth, run run goes the sky and we, tiny figures in a vast and churning world, walk on.
We walked.
And for a moment, I was the sky.
I was the sea.
I was the grass, bending in the wind.
I was the cold.
I was Byron, walking by my side, and she stopped and turned to face the ocean, then raised her head to the sky, closed her eyes as rain flecked against her face, breathed the air deep through her nose, and counted backwards from ten.
I watched her count, and heard her say, with her eyes still closed, “If they find me, they will have a trial.”
“They won’t have much evidence – I imagine they’ll kill you instead.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “The press, the media, the internet – they’ll make the noise, make the screaming, the screaming all the time, and the truth and my voice will be lost. The blaming and the noise, human things, they’ll make it about human things, not the truth. How can anyone live with it? How can anyone live with so much screaming in their lives, all the time? Matheus Pereyra loved the screaming. I guess these days people love to feel themselves burn.”
“Siobhan,” I said, and hesitated, when she didn’t move, didn’t blink. “Byron,” I corrected. “We can find a better way.”
She opened her eyes, smiled at me, looked as if she would speak, hesitated, raised her head, looked up into the sky.
A sound, half lost behind the clouds. A whoomp whoomp whoomp against the roar of the sea.
A helicopter.
“Look,” she said. “They’re here.”
“Byron…”
She raised one hand, silencing me, and smiling, turned her face to the ocean, and with a little puff of breath, ran for the sea.
She closed her eyes, just before she reached the edge of the cliff, and if she made any sound as she fell, the roaring waters ate it.
Chapter 106
A body between the rocks.
A police car, driven all the way down the isle.
An ambulance, two hours later.
I sat on the edge of the hill, and watched it all.
Gauguin came running, fell to his knees by the edge of the cliff, half wails stuttering in his throat, an old man in an inappropriately light coat, his head in his hands, weeping.
I watched, but he didn’t seem to see me.
And when, in time, the policemen had forgotten and remembered my presence enough to grow confused, I picked up my bag, and walked away.
I walked north, along the edge of the sea.
I walked over grey stones and faded grasses.
I walked past the van that sold meat pies of uncertain provenance, to which the people came.
I walked with my eyes half closed against the rain.
I walked as the sun went down.
I walked when it rose again.
I walked inland until I could see the sea no more, then walked until I was at the water again, and sea was all I could behold, as far as the eye could see.
I walked.
And as I walked, I felt the desert beneath my feet, and the sun on my face even as it rained.
And I walked to the ferry, and I rode it across the water.
And I walked to the station, and I caught the train.
And I looked out of the windows of the train, and I saw the lives of others pass me by.
A man on a bicycle pedalling to work.
A pair of children in school caps, fighting over a bag of crisps.
A man fixing his truck by the side of the road.
A woman on her phone, standing in the middle of a bridge across a running brook, gesturing angry, sad, thwarted.
An old woman and her husband, their grandchild held between them, waving at the people moving by.
I bought a newspaper at some point, and read it from my seat by the window, and its headlines were…
full of screaming.
So I put it away.
And at Edinburgh Waverley, I bought a notebook from the stationery shop, and a bag of pens, and as the engine blared its victory over inertia and the train began to crawl south, back to England, back to the warm, back to Derby and my sister who waited, I began to write.
I wrote of the past.
Of the things that had brought me here.
Of being forgotten, and being remembered.
Of diamonds in Dubai, fires in Istanbul. Of walks through Tokyo, the mountains of Korea, the islands of the southern seas. Of America and the greyhound bus, of Filipa and Parker, Gauguin and Byron14.
I wrote, to make my memory true.
The past, living.
Now.
Here, in these words.
I wrote to make myself real.
And when at last my train reached Nottingham, I clambered from the station and ordered a cab, and when I arrived in the place where my sister lives she was sleepy, but recognised me as I came through the door, and she said, “Hope! You lied; you went away for ages.”
I apologised, and showed her the presents I’d bought – films of adventure and derring-do, of good triumphant, of beauty winning out over evil, of heroes and villains, of…
an easier world.
And when she was asleep, I wrote some more, putting down the truth between the screaming.
Remember these, my words.
Now that I am home.
Now that I am, at last, myself.
Now that I am Hope.
Remember me.
By Claire North
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Touch
The Sudden Appearance of Hope
THE GAMESHOUSE (EBOOKS)
The Serpent
The Thief
The Master
COPYRIGHTS
“Hey Macarena”, by Los Del Rio (1993); English language remix by Bayside Boys (1994). Arrangement and musical direction by Jesus Bola and Manuel Soler; remix produced and mixed by The Bayside Boys: Carlos A. de Yarza and Mike Triay based on the Fangoria River Fe-Mix; concept: Jammin Johnny Caride; English lyrics: Carlos A de Yarza. Copyright © Nova Ediciones Musicales Sa, Warner/Chappell Music Spain S.A., Universal MCA Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Mgb Spain S.A, BMG Music Publishing Spain S.A., Canciones Del Mundo S.A.
“Great Balls of Fire”, performed by Jerry Lee Lewis (1957). Written by Jack Hammer, Otis Blackwell; produced by Jack Clement. Copyright © Mystical Light Music, Mijac Music, Chappell & Co. Inc., Donna Dijon Music Publications, Unichappell Music Inc.
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br /> “I Have a Dream” by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the “March on Washington”, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
