Surtsey closed her eyes for a second and prayed for another earthquake.
‘One of the other students. Tom was in the cove on the northwest, round from the jetty. We were taking samples on the eastern cliffs.’
‘Oh, Sur.’ Louise’s hand wavered above the blanket, threadbare sunflowers stretched underneath. ‘Come here.’
Surtsey took her hand and held it. It felt like her mum was barely there, her limbs twigs, her skin just dried leaves. There was no weight to her at all. Surtsey remembered Tom’s weight upon her, the solidity of him as they lay naked on that stupid island a month ago, fucking in the open air, sand scrubbing at her back as she came in time with his final thrusts. She’d yelled out to the wind, believing there was no one for miles.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through that,’ Louise said.
Surtsey laughed despite herself. ‘There are worse things going on.’
‘It’s not good for you, all this death.’
Surtsey sighed. ‘I don’t mind, I like coming to see you.’
‘I meant Tom.’
Surtsey examined her mum, the deep crevices in her face, the yellow of her skin. The smell she gave off, ammonia and earth, like she was returning to the elements.
‘He was a good man,’ Louise said. ‘Always tried to do the right thing.’
Surtsey wondered about that.
‘How has Alice taken it?’ Louise said.
Surtsey felt a tightness across her forehead and shoulders. She stretched her neck like a diver ready to jump.
‘I don’t know,’ Surtsey said. ‘We only just got back ourselves.’
‘Poor woman,’ Louise said. ‘Having to tell the girls, too, I can’t think of anything worse.’
Surtsey thought about the cameras on the prom. Had anyone seen her take the boat out or bring it back? What about satellite imaging or cameras on the firth? What about the imaginary blind date that she fed Halima?
She looked at Louise, at their hands together. Louise was staring out the window, east to the bump of Berwick Law. Her eyes were wet, maybe tears, but then her eyes were always wet, as if the last of her body fluids were desperate to escape. Louise was in a nappy the staff changed every few hours. Surtsey had to do that before Louise came here. Louise had been disgusted by the whole situation but the truth was that Surtsey didn’t mind, didn’t feel it dehumanised her mum. Just the opposite, it felt like a chance to repay her for bringing her up, a chance to demonstrate love. That seemed ridiculous and she never said it to Louise or Iona, but part of her was glad she’d been able to show how much Louise meant to her before she was gone.
Louise removed her hand from Surtsey’s and wiped at her own cheek. Definitely tears. Surtsey closed her eyes and felt the warm flush to her face as her own tears came.
14
She walked home along the prom, flapping at her face with her hands to get the blood in her cheeks to calm down and clear the puffiness from her eyes. She walked past mums pushing buggies, kids on scooters, teenagers laughing and mucking about, cyclists zipping past on the commute home, all of it a blur. She usually found all this reassuring, it made her feel part of something. But right now she felt isolated, a membrane between her and the world.
‘Hey, Sur, you OK?’
She hadn’t even noticed Donna pushing an old lady in a wheelchair towards her.
‘Hi.’ She felt unable to carry out a normal conversation. Drunk and stoned, sad and angry, guilty. The day was too bright, the sun too warm on her skin, and she squinted.
Donna gave her a look of kindness, no trace of pity. Usually, when someone knew her mum was dying they acted all weird and distant. But Donna was different, a natural carer, none of the hang-ups. It had been a good choice for her to go into nursing, especially palliative care. She was strong, could handle the death and sadness.
The woman in the wheelchair was in her eighties, asleep with a tartan rug over her knees despite the buzzing evening heat.
‘Jesse loves the sea air,’ Donna smiled. ‘But it sends her right over.’
Jesse was wearing a headscarf that made her look like a South American revolutionary. Maybe she had been. She was old enough to have done all sorts of things with her life. It was so easy to write her off as an old lady waiting for death, when she could’ve made love to Che Guevara in the jungles of Guatemala or argued over communism with Castro in the Cuban mountains.
Surtsey felt dizzy and closed her eyes.
‘Maybe you should sit down,’ Donna said.
Surtsey felt a hand at her elbow and let herself be led to the low seawall flanking the prom. She felt the grit of the sand under her hands as she placed them on the concrete and sat down. She opened her eyes. Yellow sand, not like the stuff on the island. How could two places so close be so different? But Surtsey knew the answer, she’d studied it for years, the reason behind rock types and formations, the rhythm of the planet she was standing on, trying not to float away.
They sat in silence. That was something else about Donna: she didn’t feel the need to fill the void with blether, she knew when to just sit. It felt like people had been talking at Surtsey continuously lately, giving her no time to think, to gather herself and work out what to do.
A thin sliver of drool stretched from Jesse’s mouth as she sat there. Donna reached out with a hankie and dabbed at it.
‘How long have you worked at St Columba’s?’ Surtsey said.
‘Over two years.’
‘I couldn’t do what you do.’
Donna smiled. ‘Different folk are good at different things. I couldn’t do what you do either.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘I love it.’
‘Why?’
Donna considered for a moment. ‘It’s good to feel you’re helping others.’
‘But all the sadness,’ Surtsey said. ‘All the death in that place.’
‘I like looking after people.’
‘That’s so admirable.’
‘It is what it is.’
‘But don’t you wish you got more appreciation for what you do?’
‘You don’t do it for that. Helping people is its own reward.’
Surtsey shook her head. ‘Do you believe in God?’
Donna laughed. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I wondered if it made a difference. What you’re talking about sounds like Christian goodwill.’
‘I believe in something. I don’t go to church but I think there is some force guiding us. Don’t you?’
Surtsey thought of Tom, now in the morgue being picked over by professionals. ‘No, I don’t believe in anything like that. I wish I did.’
Donna reached over and touched Surtsey’s hand. Surtsey was surprised at first, but it didn’t feel weird, just comforting, and Surtsey squeezed Donna’s hand back.
‘It’s just about doing the right thing,’ Donna said.
‘If only it was that easy.’ Surtsey was surprised that she’d said that out loud.
Donna moved her hand away from Surtsey’s on the wall and they sat in silence for a while.
Donna spoke, looking out to sea. ‘Do you remember the first time we met?’
Surtsey searched in her memory. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I was in fourth year. I was down here at the beach with a group of folk. They weren’t really friends, just folk who let me hang around with them. Denise, Lily and the rest. They were much more mature than me. It was end of term and everyone was drinking, there was a bonfire.’
Surtsey shook her head. If drink was involved, maybe that’s why she didn’t remember.
‘Other groups were coming and going, drawn by the bonfire and bevvy. Denise was trying to impress some boy, I can’t remember who, and started slagging me off to him and his mates, about my weight, telling them she’d seen me in the showers, the rolls of fat, it was disgusting.’
‘She was a right bitch,’ Surtsey said.
Donna smiled. ‘You really don’t remember this?’
S
urtsey shook her head.
‘Anyway, you were there with a couple of older girls. You were pretty drunk, and could’ve just sat there like everyone else, but you didn’t, you stood up and tore strips off her, started shouting. She just shut up, ashamed she’d been called out. The boys looked awkward and drifted off.’
Surtsey laughed. ‘Are you sure it was me?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Doesn’t sound like me.’
Donna turned and looked her in the eye. ‘So you do know about doing the right thing, even if you don’t think you do.’
Surtsey felt a shudder go through her and wondered if it was another aftershock.
‘Did you feel that?’ Surtsey said.
‘What?’
‘I just thought I felt something, a tremor.’
They sat on the wall, their fingers almost touching on the stone.
‘Maybe I felt something,’ Donna said, but Surtsey didn’t know if she really had or if she was just making her feel better.
15
Sometimes you just needed to fuck a skinny Irish boy. Surtsey had spent the rest of the evening getting stoned with Halima in the living room as they compulsively watched the news. It was strange to be part of the story, dislocating somehow. When Halima had finally had enough and stumbled to bed, Surtsey felt suddenly lonely. So she made a booty call and, as if by magic, here he was in her bed.
There wasn’t a scrap of meat on Brendan, barely any muscle either, just bone and sinew, all edges and bumps. They started off warm and fuzzy from the grass but Brendan could go for ages and gradually it woke Surtsey up, brought her more into the moment. She’d wanted to use him to forget about everything, but that was dishonest and disrespectful so she focussed and took charge, climbed on top, controlled the pace and rhythm, laughed out loud at simply fucking with no consequences. He came first but she was close behind, digging her nails into his scrawny arms as she felt the tremors through her.
She collapsed beside him on the bed.
He drank from a pint of water on the bedside table, Surtsey running a finger down his knobbly spine. She couldn’t help comparing the two of them. With Tom she felt grown up, a real woman, whereas the juvenile joy of this was liberating. She felt physically different relative to the two men. With Brendan she became the curvy earth mother compared to his spindly frame. With Tom she felt like a sylph, a whisper of a woman compared to his bulk and experience.
‘Penny for them,’ Brendan said.
Surtsey shook her head and smiled. ‘Just thinking how much I fancy you, that’s all.’
‘Back at you.’
They looked in each other’s eyes for a time then Surtsey turned away, padded to the toilet.
In the bathroom she sat and made herself pee. She wiped and washed her hands, looked in the mirror of the bathroom cabinet.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered to her reflection.
She opened the cabinet and saw creams and lotions, some of her mum’s old stuff that she hadn’t taken with her up the road. She thought about her mum asking for pills. She couldn’t blame her. Surtsey wouldn’t be half as brave in the circumstances. It took guts to make that decision.
She walked back to her room. Brendan lay on the bed with his eyes closed.
‘I’m not asleep,’ he said.
‘Go ahead.’
He opened one eye. ‘It’s OK if I stay over?’
‘Of course.’
‘I just thought…’
‘What?’
He propped himself up on his elbows. It was hard to take him seriously with his cock limp against his thigh.
‘You seemed really upset in the pub,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know if you wanted company.’
‘You’re here, aren’t you?’
Brendan held her gaze. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You and me.’
Surtsey put on a smile. ‘Sure.’
‘You’d tell me if there was something wrong?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Because I’m right into you, you know.’
They hadn’t used the L word yet. So unlike Tom, who said it on their second night together, despite his family. Crazy way to speak but it meant different things to different people, who was she to judge. She didn’t know if she loved Tom, or Brendan, if she’d loved any man. Or maybe she loved them all. How can you ever know yourself with all the noise and interference coming from the world?
She’d been seeing Brendan for over a year, a fact that shocked her every time she remembered. He’d done his undergrad at Trinity College while still living at home with his parents, pitched up in Edinburgh for his PhD at the same time as she started hers, desperate to get some independence. It was odd that he was living away from home for the first time just as she returned home to take care of her mum. They skirted around each other to begin with, just two faces in a group of friends, but gradually Surtsey began to notice his smile, the languorous way he walked, his easy grace. They snogged while drunk, then just kept going, never giving it a name, not hiding it but not displaying it either, drifting casually into a relationship. But Surtsey had never truly invested in it, that’s why she was shocked it had gone on so long. She’d never met his parents or been back to Ireland with him, had barely met any of his friends, only knew the highlights reel of his childhood on the outskirts of Dublin with two older sisters. Maybe they were the reason he was so respectful of Surtsey, so un-macho. He was easy to like, very easy to fuck, but she was never sure that he was easy to love.
‘Go to sleep,’ she said.
‘Coming to bed?’
She scrambled over him, kissed him on the way, stroked his thigh then settled in behind to spoon him.
It only took a couple of minutes for his breathing to become heavy and nasal. She uncurled herself and looked around the room as if she was a stranger, an interloper in her own life. The rickety old pine bed she’d picked up on Freecycle, plain white sheets. The dresser by the window, a clutter of make-up and toiletries, hand cream, anti-perspirant, overpriced Dior Poison Girl that smelt of bitter fruit. She remembered the tagline for the advert: ‘I am not a girl, I am Poison.’ The usual pretentious nightclub scenes, a doe-eyed model breaking society’s rules. Such bullshit. And yet there was the bottle staring at her.
She went over and sat on the stool at the dresser. Lifted the glass stopper and dabbed at her neck. She wondered what would happen if she drank the contents. She gazed at the walls. No posters of singers or movie stars, but a large map of the world with pins in it for each country she’d visited. Fifteen so far, not bad but she hoped plenty would follow. One pin stuck in Iceland, when Louise had taken her as a teenager on a field trip to Surtsey, somehow circumventing visiting restrictions. She tried to remember the island but it merged in her memory with the Inch.
Elsewhere on her walls were posters of Surtsey and the Inch, and other new volcanic islands off the coasts of Indonesia and Japan. Another large poster of Yosemite, just to show she wasn’t only obsessed with islands, and one of the Grand Canyon. No pin in the map for either of them yet. So much left to do, so many places to see.
An electronic ping she recognised sent a shiver through her. It came from her clothes piled up on the floor. Tom’s phone. She reached for her jeans and pulled it out, swiped the screen. Another message from an unknown number:
I’m sorry.
She stared at the phone shaking in her fist. Brendan rolled onto his back, chest rising and falling. She watched him as he rubbed at his nose then relaxed.
Another ping in her hand:
I didn’t mean it.
She wanted to throw the phone at the wall, smash it into a million pieces. Instead she just stared at the four words on the screen. She imagined it was the island itself, apologising for taking her lover from her. As if. She typed in reply:
Tell me who you are.
She pressed send and waited. Looked at the world map on the wall. Seven billi
on people on the planet, only one of them on the other end of this phone.
Ping:
Not yet.
She thought about that for a long time then replied:
Then when?
No answer. The phone screen eventually faded to black. Surtsey woke it up and typed:
If you’re really sorry, go to the police.
A reply came quickly this time.
I can’t. Goodbye.
‘Wait,’ she said. Brendan snuffled and scratched at his chest, murmured under his breath.
She pulled on joggers and a T-shirt, took the phone downstairs in the dark. She went into the living room but Iona was asleep on the sofa, leather jacket wrapped around her shoulders. She went into the kitchen then out the back door and stood in the garden on the small square of grass and tried to return call but no joy. Eventually she typed:
You coward. Who are you?
The light from the screen illuminated her face in the gloom. Her feet were wet from the dewy grass. She looked around as if she would find answers, saw the thin outlines of her neighbours’ houses, the back wall that led to the lane, the shed where her boat slept.
She went to the shed and opened it, checked on the boat. It was as she’d left it, motor pulled up, hull locked into the trailer. She ran a hand along the side of the hull, rubber sticky against her fingers. Her hand came away sandy and she stared at it then wiped it on her trousers.
She looked one last time at the phone screen but knew there would be nothing. She put it in her pocket and pulled herself up into the boat. She landed inside and sat there, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for answers. Waiting for whatever was coming next.
16
Fault Lines Page 6
