by Lowe, L. Lee
It amused Jesse to light his cigarette without matches or lighter, and he was surprised to find that it even tasted different—not better, just a little more resinous. Only as he returned his cigarette packet to his pocket did he remember the top. He stared into the pool but there was nothing in the water; the top must have fallen to the grass. The sun warm on his neck and back, he was feeling sleepy. I’ll look for it, he told himself, as soon as I finish my fag.
He watched the glowing tip of the cigarette, the curling wisp of smoke, the lengthening ash which eventually dropped off into the grass; in fact he watched more than he smoked. There was something deeply satisfying about looking at the simplest things, really looking. Shed preconceptions, shed expectations, shed the self, and the world becomes magical again. He remembered the wonder he felt when his grandmother showed him how cream churned into butter. Or his father’s games with wood. ‘Close your eyes, Jes, and smell, really smell. Become that smell. Each type of timber smells different, the ash from the pine from the oak. Wood talks and tells you its name.’ Funny, he could think about that now without bitterness. It hurt—it probably always would—but not with that flood of heat which had required all his energy to contain. He was beginning to recall some of his father’s stories.
It hit him then, a realisation as penetrating as a baby’s cry of need, of hunger—his love of words was as much his father’s legacy as his grandmother’s. Not everything had been destroyed by a single act of madness. Buried in the ashes were shards of poetry, waiting to be disinterred. And feelings, once vitrified feelings . . .
Lost in thought, Jesse didn’t hear the sounds of approach until a voice spoke behind him.
‘Such a waste, but we need to teach Andersen a lesson. He’s a persistent bugger, and the shipments aren’t coming through the way they should.’
Jesse cries out, drops his cigarette, and springs to his feet. The air has a sudden glassy ring to it, as though it would shatter at a misstep. He turns slowly, heart hammering, to see a stranger with long white hair standing behind the pool, the cool appraising look of the art connoisseur on his face—eyes narrowed, nostrils flared, thin lips pursed in consideration. A new piece to add to his collection, if the price is right, and a certificate of authenticity guaranteed. Jesse feels mounted behind a sheet of plate glass; on display. The air winks with reflected light.
It takes a moment or two for Jesse to recover from the shock, and a moment or two longer for him to grasp that he’s not seeing something real—perhaps not unreal either, but not the here-and-now of the Andersen garden on this quiet, complacent, sunny afternoon in August. He squints against the glare from the sundial, just able to make out the figures slightly off centre to his right—the tall white-haired stranger, two other youngish blokes and an older one, who are staring, not at Jesse, but at . . . my god, it’s Peter there on the bed, Jesse recognises him from Finn’s photos. All at once Jesse’s body is dripping sweat, he can feel it soaking into his T-shirt. He takes a step backwards, then another, though he knows he can’t be seen: it’s Peter and the others who are imprisoned behind time’s two-way mirror. And the scene is gradually clarifying, taking on the sharp lucidity of cloudy water allowed to settle—water whose still lens magnifies the details of glistening stones and sediment, concentrates the focus of Jesse’s perceptions.
Kill me. I can’t take any more.
Jesse can’t tell whether Peter is speaking the words aloud or only thinking them. Or whether they originate in Jesse’s own head. What does it matter? Peter’s desperation is clear enough. He’s naked and cadaverous, his skin already as translucent as lampshade parchment. His breathing is shallow, his eyes shut. He’s lying on his side, his hands curled before his genitals. It looks as though he can hardly lift his head. Jesse doubts that Peter would be able to stand, much less walk or run.
At a sign from the boss, one of the men steps forward, grabs their prisoner’s arms, and yanks them away from his body. The blue top drops from Peter’s fingers to the floor, where it skitters out of sight under the bed, but Jesse barely notices. Aghast and uncomprehending, he’s staring instead at the bloke holding Peter’s hands; despite his beard, the resemblance is unmistakable: Daniel, Mick’s twin brother. One of the others moves in to help, and then Jesse recognises him as well—the fat man who’d been carrying a syringe that one time. Together they roll Peter onto his back and wind thick cords around his ankles which they attach to the bedframe, splaying his legs, then pass another rope around one of his wrists—his left one—which they secure to an iron ring above him on the wall, so that his arm is stretched at an unnatural and inescapably painful angle. His hip bones jut up like steel king poles in canvas worn thin through years of hard use, canvas become papery and slack and chalky, which would tear as readily as ageing skin. Jesse aches to cover the sight of that sunken abdomen, those shrunken organs. Some archives should never be unsealed.
Peter makes no attempt to struggle with his captors—hopelessness or resignation or sheer frailty, Jesse assumes. Perhaps all three. Or is Peter even conscious? As if in response to Jesse’s silent question, Peter opens his eyes. They’re dulled with pain—and drugs, probably—but then beneath the murky film Jesse sees a ghostly flicker of pleading. Peter works his mouth and seems to mumble something, but either it’s too faint for Jesse to hear, or Peter is too weak to do more than move his lips. Or too frightened: for the fat sod has walked away into the periphery, where the light reflecting off the sundial blinds Jesse’s vision, but returns almost immediately bearing a knife in one hand, a knife much larger than Jesse’s own, as long as a good-sized carving knife, and from the glint like a bright blue flame along its cutting edge, just as sharp.
Jesse catches his breath. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No.’ His voice strikes against the air, and he can hear the sound it makes, that first shrill crack.
Peter’s eyes widen, and he turns his head weakly from side to side, as if trying to locate the source of a sound whispered in his ear, below the threshold of speech. Does extremity thin the reflective coating on the mirror? Or proximity to death dim the light enough to allow you to see a little, just a little, of the other side? Peter has the look of someone with nothing more to lose. Yet glowing deep within his pinprick pupils is a fugitive but unequivocal spark of determination. Jesse doubts that the others notice: the whites of Peter’s eyes have yellowed like cheap paper, and their beautiful green now has the cloudy mottled look of antique bottles.
‘What are you going to do?’ Jesse cries hoarsely upon seeing the man approach the bed.
Help me.
We should geld him, boss. Like a steer. I can do it good, learned how as a kid. Or d’you want to cut his cock off as well?
Help me. Please.
The bastard smiles and lays the cold steel on his victim’s groin. Peter shudders violently, an unexpected show of strength. The man runs the tip of his blade lightly along the length of Peter’s penis, almost a lover’s caress, then cups Peter’s balls in his free hand.
Feel good, boy? Better enjoy it. It’ll be the last time.
And to Jesse’s horror, Peter is becoming aroused—his body’s ultimate betrayal. Though not his last. His last is that he would still live. Peter closes his eyes and says nothing, makes no sound; it’s Jesse who moans in distress.
Enough. The boss steps forward and gives his orders. Not now. Gag him. Which they do, quickly and efficiently with a balled-up rag and a length of black duct tape, something they’ve obviously done before, so practised are their movements.
Good, says the boss. He addresses the older man. Now here’s what I want you to do. Take off his right hand. His artist’s hand. You’re the doctor. Make sure he doesn’t bleed to death. I’ve got a use for him yet.
And then the boss smiles for the first time, a smile made of toughened glass. I wish I could be there when Andersen opens the parcel, he says.
Jesse hears the scream in his head—Peter’s his own Peter’s—and he acts without conscious thought, without words,
without restraint. Some abominations have to be stopped.
shrieking the fireball erupts from the gnomon shrieking hovers for a split-second in the air shrieking mushrooms with shrieking a blinding flash of light and heat and pressuR shrieking to break with boundless shrieking through the impassable glassy barshriekingrier of the past shrieking shock waves waves waves shrieking knock Jesse to the ground shrieking the air cascading shrieking in shards around him shrieking
As Jesse falls, he has a single brief glimpse of incandescent dancing bones—a reverse image like an x-ray branded on his retina, on his mind, on the symmetry of time itself.
Then silence.
~~~
Jesse lay still, afraid to open his eyes. He knew what he’d done. The past could not be altered without immense consequence. Or an infinite programming loop. Or could not be altered at all, and he was the ghost in the machine, and himself the paradox.
He listened to feathery sound of the wind. He listened to a bird singing its short sharp refrain, again and again, at regular intervals. He listened to a plane pass in a trombone slide overhead. He listened to the earth shift and drumble. He listened to his own lungs and heart and stomach clang and hiss like antiquated cast-iron radiators. And he thought he heard, though perhaps only with his inner ear, a ghostly thank you like a harmonic on the cello, reverberating to an elegiac stop within his larynx.
If the world had changed, its sounds had not. Slowly he sat up, opened his eyes, and looked round. His gaze rested on the remains of the sundial. How would he explain that to Finn and Meg? The metal warped—no fused—into a clump of lustreless bronze, the plinth dismembered into pieces of severed marble strewn like ancient statuary in and near the cracked ruins of the pool, now dry. He had an uneasy suspicion that the Andersen’s insurance would not cover acts of—what, precisely? not God.
He got to his feet. Peter’s top lay by the twisted gnomon. When he picked it up, it felt no warmer than usual, no different. But it no longer belonged to Peter, that much Jesse knew. He had finally made it his own.
And once he’d made certain that no anomaly had cracked the plinth of the known universe, he’d have to find a way to tell the Andersens. Uncertainty was fine in principle, but they had the right to learn what had happened to Peter. And even someone like Mick, to his brother.
Chapter 36
At Siggy’s Jesse stopped just inside the doorway. The music surrounded him like a conversation of gossipy magpies, village women at the borehole drawing water for the day’s washing. Notes spilled from the tenor sax in a voluble chatter—an old woman’s toothless cackle, a high-pitched giggle, a knowing snicker, a whisper, a raucous joke, a hacking smoker’s cough, a complaint, a sob. He could hardly believe that only one instrument produced such a gush of voices, and though Daniel deserved his fate—well he did, didn’t he?—Jesse lingered, not keen to relate even a chlorinated version of the story. It was easy to think Mick would be far better off without his brother, but Jesse knew that families swam in cloudy waters; how well he knew it. Wading ashore together, his father had always insisted they stand knee-deep in the lake and wait patiently to scoop a drink till the silt they’d churned up settled, now settled too something in Jesse’s gut. Mick was a musician, very possibly a brilliant musician—not a judgement Jesse trusted himself to make with any real assurance—and though Mick’s pain would run rough and hard and swift, turbulent as any stormy river of sound, it would channel nevertheless into his music, feeding it, enriching it, and ultimately transforming it. And maybe, just maybe, with the sonorous and subterranean complexity of water, renew his belief in himself.
Why did that not seem like much consolation?
Or even likely when Jesse recalled Sarah’s night-smudged face.
‘Jesse.’ Siggy clapped him on the shoulder, then pulled him into a crushing embrace. ‘Welcome.’ From Siggy it was not intrusive, nor unwelcome. ‘You by yourself?’
‘Yeah.’ Jesse nodded in Mick’s direction. ‘I wanted to hear him play.’
‘Watch out for that one. He’s goin’ saxin’ with the gods.’
‘Good, isn’t he?’
‘That good.’ Siggy kissed his fingertips in a universal chef’s gesture, then rubbed his belly. ‘Ambrosia. Almost as good as my latest chocolate mousse.’
Jesse grinned. ‘Then I’ll have to try some. Is a table free?’
‘Is the air? Come on, I’ll put you in front.’ Siggy pointed to a square table for four not more than a few metres from Mick. A small tent of cardboard marked the table as reserved.
Jesse shook his head. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather sit against the wall. When Mick finishes playing, I’d like to talk to him quietly.’
‘Know him then?’
‘Yeah.’
Siggy stared at Jesse for a moment, combing his fingers through his beard and working his lips as if he were tasting a heavy red wine from an unknown vineyard. A little sour.
‘You’re lookin’ lots better, not so hungry, if you get my meanin’. Storm’s retreatin’, sea runnin’ smooth. Good fishin’. That Finn knows what he’s doin’. Like my pappy, he’s hauled plenty of nets. You be careful now. Don’t you go capsizin’ the boat.’
Siggy led Jesse to a window overlooking the courtyard. Almost an alcove, and the evening sun glazing the small table with a lustrous weld, intersected by long slanting bars of shadow from the mullion and transoms. A cobalt-blue vase held a delicate white flower, waxy like a lily though scentless. Distracted by his own feelings of disquiet—a warning from someone he respected—Jesse failed to appreciate the Vermeer-like quality of the setting. He pulled out a chair and sat down.
Siggy often spent free afternoons with his girls in museums, here in the city, further afield whenever possible. There was something timeless about the boy staring at his hands in front of him on the table, his long blond hair flowing to simple yellow from lemon and egg yolk and silvery quince, as if his image had been projected onto a canvas by a camera obscura from the past: the pearly tones to his skin, to his fingernails, to the lilac shadows under his eyes . . . Siggy shivered, the islands ran strong in his blood. He regarded Jesse closely, with the same sombre attention he’d give to a child whose belly was swollen by malnutrition. In the end he did what he knew best how to do.
‘I’ll send over a plate of food,’ he said.
Jesse shook his head. ‘Just something to drink, maybe a bit of chocolate mousse. If that’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK. Here, you eat.’
‘I’m not very hungry,’ Jesse said apologetically.
‘Finn won’t mind.’
‘Won’t mind what?’
‘You’re smart enough to figure it out.’
Jesse looked down again at his hands.
‘Like payin’ your own way, do you?’ Siggy asked shrewdly, but with a note of approval in his voice.
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, I love feedin’ people, ’specially those who appreciate it. How about we call it my invitation this time?’ When he saw Jesse was about to refuse, he added, ‘You fixin’ to insult me? Don’t tell me you’re a racist.’
Jesse grinned. ‘OK.’ A meal would be great, especially one of Siggy’s.
‘Mick expectin’ you?’
Jesse glanced over at Mick, who was playing an intricate blues piece now, but whose attention seemed to be straying in their direction.
‘No.’
‘I’ll send him over when he’s done his set.’
‘Thanks.’
Siggy hesitated. ‘Thank me later. Mick’s a damn fine musician, but my gut tells me something’s wrong. And a cook’s gut is never wrong. Not if he wants to stay in business.’
~~~
It was warm in the restaurant, and the rich food was making Jesse sleepy. He tried to concentrate on the music, but found his mind slipping its mooring, drifting into shallow cuts and overflow weirs and disused arms, until it reached a winding hole, where it would turn back to the flow of notes, now smooth, now trickling, n
ow fast and steep, then float away again like a butty loosed from its tow. At one point he wondered whether Matthew would let him go back to work on the narrowboat, take him out on it someday; whether in fact Matthew would ever have anything to do with him again . . . a puppy? . . . no, he thought disconsolately, impossible—an impertinence, tantamount to telling Matthew a life is insignificant . . . replaceable . . .
‘What the fuck do you want?’
Jesse looked up, then caught his breath. Mick was standing with his body angled away from the table, a large glass of coke in his hand. For a moment it seemed as though Daniel had come back for retribution. Jesse gestured towards the other chair. Mick tightened his lips, shook his head, stared at a hairline crack in the wall.
‘Just tell me what you want.’
‘I can’t tell you like this. Sit down.’ Jesse pushed his plate to one side. He owed Mick a certain amount of consideration, even if real sympathy were out of the question. ‘Please.’
For the first time Mick directed his gaze towards Jesse’s face. Their eyes met, then Mick’s slid towards the window, returned, glanced away, returned again.
‘Your music is beautiful,’ Jesse said quietly.
Mick flinched and averted his face, as if Jesse had spat at him. But he set his coke on the table, and after a hesitation, pulled out the chair and sat down. He traced a fingertip along the sweating sides of his glass.
‘I wasn’t just saying that about your playing, trying to soften you up or ingratiate myself or something. I meant it,’ Jesse said.
