Damascus

by Richard Beard

  ‘You can kiss me if you like.’

  It is the first of November 1993 and Hazel says:

  ‘You can kiss me if you like,’and Spencer thinks someone might be watching. He doesn’t want to smile but he smiles and with his little finger he draws a stick-man kicking a football in the sand.

  ‘You can’t kiss until you’re married,’ he says. He doesn’t look up, not even when Hazel asks him when was the last time he watched a video? Everyone kisses before they’re married. She starts rummaging through her bag, saying they should make a pact, and Spencer likes the idea even though he’d never have thought of it himself.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Right now,’ Hazel says. ‘Before we kiss. Why not?’

  She pushes right to the bottom of the bag and pulls out the woollen red-and-white gloves. She puts one of them on, the right hand one. She tells Spencer to put on the other one and then they hold hands, glove to glove, right hand to left hand.

  ‘Why are we wearing gloves?’ Spencer wants to know.

  ‘It’s a pact. You have to promise to love me for ever.’

  ‘What do I do with the glove?’

  ‘Afterwards you keep it. First you have to promise to love me.’

  Spencer is thinking they ought to check on Rachel and Olive, and what will Hazel’s mother do when she finds out that Hazel’s made a pact? Why can’t he stop thinking like this and just kiss her?

  They hold on tight to each other’s gloved hands.

  ‘Promise,’ Hazel says, shaking his hand up and down, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Cross your heart and hope to die.’

  11/1/93 MONDAY 08:12

  At the bottom of the deep end of the empty swimming pool, Hazel mouthed a mouth breathing underwater bubbles. Then she made a face like a fish. She looked up brightly at Spencer and asked him if he knew what time it was.

  ‘It’s twelve minutes past eight,’ Spencer said, but Hazel already knew what time it was. She meant, ‘Have you seen how early it is?’

  ‘I brought you some tea,’ Spencer said.

  He climbed down the short ladder into the shallow end, walked carefully past the full-size billiard table, and then carefully negotiated the steep slope to join her at the bottom of the deep end. The tiles in the pool were dark blue, and the dusty light falling from the glass roof felt thick like underwater. Hazel had her telephone with her and Spencer’s library books, and she was already twenty pages into a crime novel called Sir John Magill’s Last Journey. Something terrible was always about to happen.

  Spencer slid his back down the side of the pool, his vertebrae clicking on the plaster lines between tiles.

  ‘It’s like being in a huge bathroom,’ Hazel said, ‘but without a bath in it.’

  ‘Bow-wow,’ Spencer said, showing her the echo.

  ‘Boing,’ Hazel said. ‘Bing-bong.’

  ‘Boom.’

  Hazel’s hair, parted in the middle, was darker than usual because it was still damp from the shower. She was wearing her long charcoal-coloured sweater dress, loose-necked with finger-skimming sleeves and obviously an evening outfit. It was all she had with her. She wore a gold chain and a little lipstick and a pair of Spencer’s socks she’d borrowed to keep her feet warm. They were very big and woolly and a kind of oatmeal colour. She hoped he didn’t mind.

  ‘Great house,’ Hazel said, taking the green-and-white striped mug which Spencer held out to her. ‘Quiet.’

  The tea wasn’t very hot but she blew some steam off the top anyway, getting a good look at him without making it too obvious. Not bad. Could have been a lot worse.

  Alas, he seemed to have brought a funny smell into the pool.

  ‘Kippers,’ Spencer said. ‘William likes a kipper for his breakfast.’

  ‘This is the man who lives in the shed?’

  ‘In the vegetable garden. He doesn’t go out much. His brother owns the house but they don’t get on.’

  ‘And what happens to William if someone buys the house? What happens to you?’

  Hazel’s telephone went off like an alarm. They both looked at it, black on top of the library books, its insistent electronic noise finding echoes in the sharpest angles of the swimming pool Spencer said: ‘That’ll be the phone.’

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Spencer said. ‘Depends who’s ringing.’

  The phone went quiet, and the broad silence which followed sank slowly to the bottom of the deep end. ‘Nobody,’ Hazel said. ‘Not anymore anyway.’

  Spencer stood up again, and Hazel wondered if he was always this restless. She followed him back up the slope to the billiard table and skidded the last metre or so in her socks.

  ‘The billiard room’s going to be re-painted,’ Spencer explained. ‘They had to put the table somewhere.’

  ‘How did they get it down here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Act of God.’

  ‘Pool table.’

  ‘Heard it.’

  Spencer looked at her as if he had something to say, and then he just looked at her. She touched her hair to check it hadn’t gone funny. It was nearly dry. She crossed her arms over her breasts.

  ‘Are you alright, Spencer? You look…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘More worried than I expected.’

  He rolled a red billiard ball towards its spot at the end of the table. ‘I’m just a worrier. I worry about what’s going to happen.’

  Hazel raised her eyebrows. ‘We could always go back to bed.’

  ‘I mean apart from that.’

  He wasn’t looking at her when he said it, a bad habit of his which was beginning to annoy her.

  ‘I have to go out,’ Spencer said. 'I won’t be long.’

  It’s not to take your library books back, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Spencer said, ‘I have to take my library books back. You can check the date.’

  ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

  'I should get a present for my niece. It’s her birthday.’

  Hazel took a deep breath, suddenly distrusting her earlier feeling that she’d always known him. How could anybody know anyone else? She took another deep breath. Then she asked Spencer if he wanted her to leave.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, of course I don’t,’ but he was looking round the pool, licking his finger and drawing a football goal on a tile, and then, as an afterthought, a football inside it.

  ‘Is it because of last night?’ she asked, suddenly worried that sleeping with him had changed everything. ‘I thought it was amazing. It was amazing, wasn’t it?’

  Spencer blinked and for a moment his eyes stayed closed. He opened them and turned the red ball a fraction with his finger, rolling it minutely one way and then another.

  ‘What’s wrong?'

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I think I’m in shock.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I never thought something like this could happen so quickly.’

  ‘Well, it’s happened. It’s here we are.’

  ‘Hazel, do you believe in Damascus?’

  For the first time, across the billiard table, he looked at her directly. Clear brown eyes, most attractive. He should do that more often.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Spencer meant did she believe in the one moment which changed everything? But he wanted to explain it more clearly than that. Did she believe in lightning and bolts from the blue? Were there certain events which made everything look different, overnight? Could people be converted to different ways of thinking, without any warning, waking up as one type of person and then waking up as another? Was anyone singled out for enlightenment? Did miracles exist? Look. Basically. Were there signs from God, telling people what to do next?

  ‘You want me to leave, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ Spencer said, ‘no I don’t.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I do not. I just have to go out. But I definitely want you to be here when I get back.’
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  Forcefully, using the bottom of his fist, Spencer started to erase the drawing he’d made on the tile. Hazel walked round the table, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the ear.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Hazel said. 'It must be your birthday.’

  3

  History is, in a sense, the sum of our transformations. In contemplating the evidence, though, we are as likely to be struck by ruin as creation.

  THE TIMES 11/1/93

  11/1/93 MONDAY 08:24

  Just when you thought you were actually getting somewhere. Bam, life could change, just like that. Spencer had to go and get a woman involved.

  William faced up squarely to the front door. He straightened his braces and checked his flies. He took a deep breath. All he had to do was open the door and step outside. He would come to no harm. The last time and the time before that the traffic had been unusually frenetic, or in the street an unscrupulous contractor had been using paint with a high solvent-content, poisoning William’s nerves, increasing his heartbeat, deflating his resolve. High-solvent paints were everywhere. It was often in the paper.

  He should pull himself together. Even though it was the last day of Britain he was still British, and people not unlike him had until very recently controlled a quarter of the earth. There was therefore no need to be frightened, and he could manage perfectly well without Spencer.

  He failed to reach out for the latch and corrected himself: it was only good sense to be frightened. He checked his braces and his flies. He tried to flatten his hair. His knowledge of outside life came almost exclusively from the daily paper, and hidden away on the inside pages of The Times were most of the modern possibilities of a day, including stabbiegs, shootings, stranglings, muggings, stonings, and a single instance of murder by a poisoned pellet fired from a customised umbrella. He could be shot in the face at point-blank range, abducted, tortured, left for dead on forgotten wasteground where he wouldn’t be discovered for more than a month. It never seemed to get any better. As of today, for example, someone out there had nearly two thousand pounds of stolen Czech Semtex, of which any one pound could turn up under a nearby car wrapped in an Irish or Algerian or Libyan flag. William would die instantly, or on the way to hospital, or in surgery, and all this was as true for the new Europe as it was for the old Britain. There were mad killer nutcases everywhere, and when not hiding behind black hoods they looked just like everyone else. It was only natural, therefore, faced with the front door and these possibilities for outside life, that William should hesitate to reach for the latch.

  He noticed the junk mail on the mat. Sighing, he supposed he should pick it all up, and by pushing aside two copies of the Yellow Pages he found space for it on the telephone table. He discovered, now that he was suddenly inclined to count them, that there were sixteen items, including an introductory offer for American Express Membership Miles Points, a subscription discount for Antique Collector magazine, a 2 for 1 coupon from Pizza Express, and a prize draw from the Leukaemia Research Fund. Don’t Delay! this last envelope was franked, It Could Be Your Lucky Day!

  Of course it could, and William was about to open the door and step outside and come to no harm when Spencer nearly gave him a heart attack. Or at least, Spencer was behind him and William didn’t realise and then Spencer said something. He said:

  ‘Already finished the paper?’

  ‘God you gave me a shock,’ William said, recovering himself.

  ‘Going out on your own?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I thought you wanted an escort?’

  ‘And maybe not.’

  William stared hard at the empty Celtic mug in Spencer’s hand, with its obvious rim-prints of lipstick like an extra design.

  'Things change,’ William said.

  Spencer shook his head and turned towards the kitchen. William followed him. ‘How could you?’

  ‘We always knew this might happen.’

  ‘But not like this. It should have been with Jessica.’

  ‘I don’t see what difference it makes.’

  'If it’s not Jessica you might be wrong. What colour hair does she have?’

  ‘Who?’

  'This other one.’

  ‘Her name is Hazel.’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’

  ‘She’s busy.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s reading. I gave her one of my library books.’

  Spencer stacked Hazel’s mug in the sink with the rest of the washing-up, then looked William in the eye as he wiped his hands on a cloth. Definitely not at ease with himself, William judged, and not enough sleep either.

  ‘What does she do as a job? I bet Jessica has a better job.’

  ‘She’s a teacher,’ Spencer said.

  ‘It’s Monday. She’ll be late for school.’

  On his way out to the hall, controlling himself and his voice, Spencer patiently explained that she was a distance-learning teacher. This meant that she taught adults by correspondence and telephone, and surprisingly, because it was the first time he’d ever thought about distance-learning, William discovered that he didn’t like the idea of it. At the same time he knew he ought to give Spencer a chance, because maybe this girl was the one. It was unlikely, because it was always unlikely, but it was also always possible. There was even the cautionary example of William at the same age, but history didn’t have to repeat itself. Expecting it to do so was a sure sign of growing old.

  Spencer unlooped his raincoat from a crucifix-shaped pole they used as a coat-stand. He shrugged himself inside it and picked up the plastic bag full of books which he’d left by the door.

  ‘I have to take my library books back.’

  'I thought you said she was reading one.’

  ‘I’ll take it back tomorrow. One day for one book won’t make any difference.’

  Just before Spencer opened the door, William put a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘But she’s not Jessica, is she?’ he said. ‘That’s my point.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Spencer said, reaching for the latch. ‘She might be.’

  It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, in Carrick or Kidderminster or Redditch or Holt Heath, in Howe of Fife or Egham or Marlborough or Herne Bay, Hazel’s mother is taking charge. As often as she can, she drives back from the hospital in her husband’s Ford Mondeo or Peugeot 405 or Vauxhall Cavalier. Mr Burns is away on a sales trip to New York or Delhi or Moscow, but he telephones at least once every hour, either to the hospital or the house, where Hazel is thirteen years old and all alone. She knows that at her age she shouldn’t mind so much, but today everything is different.

  She stays mostly in the front room, where she sits on the beige sofa or on one of the matching chairs. She turns the television on or off. She plays the piano or she doesn’t. She reads a paragraph in the newspaper or starts one of Olive’s books. She makes chess moves on the board where the king of the black pieces is Napoleon or King Richard or Mao Tse-tung. She tries a crossword book or stacks dominoes or loiters by the window, waiting for the arrival in the drive of Mum in Dad’s car.

  Everything around her, which only yesterday seemed so familiar, is both all she can be sure of and instantly forgettable. A print of Vermeer’s Guitar Player over the fireplace, that much she remembers, or it might be a Lowry or a Van Gogh. A shelf displaying card invitations to the New Paradigm Conference or The Times Dillons Church Debate or the Getty exhibition at the Royal Academy. The bookcase neatly filled with the complete works of Orwell or Kipling, Kenneth Grahame or Edward Lear, Rebecca or Pride and Prejudice or Little Women or Kasparov vs Short 1993, The glass corner cabinet with its collection of china animals: at last, something which never changes.

  Hazel’s Mum likes to collect them in pairs. She already has dogs, cats, rabbits, seagulls, goldfish and horses, and every time they move house Dad buys Mum some new ones. The latest addition is a pair of bad
gers, a good sign because they move house whenever Dad gets a better job, to somewhere slightly larger, quieter, and a little further from the town centre. This year Hazel’s Dad has been voted Salesperson of the Year ‘93, and they’ve moved house again.

  Hazel sees all these objects and herself and her family moving from house to house as if none of it has anything to do with her. For the first time she stands separate from her own life and watches it from the outside, actively trying to memorise this room, this moment, her mother’s china animals, because who knows what else might be different before tomorrow?

  Exactly now, the Ford Mondeo or the Peugeot 405 or the Vauxhall Cavalier pulls into the drive. Hazel picks up The Times Book of Jumbo Crosswords, suddenly embarrassed to be thinking thoughts which seem out of place, under the circumstances. Or it might have been The Times Jumbo Concise Crosswords or just The Times Crosswords or even the Jubilee Puzzles, but whatever it is, Hazel puts it down again as soon as her mother opens the door. She is carrying a plastic bag bulging with provisions from Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s or Waitrose or Safeway, and Hazel follows her through to the kitchen, asking if there’s anything she can do to help.

  Together, mother and daughter unpack and stack in cupboards muesli, soya beans, cod-liver oil, apples, oranges, milk, prunes, walnut-halves, lavender tea, instant chicken soup.

  ‘She’s still not well,’ Mum says. 'I bought her a few things, in case she wakes up.’

  She holds open the bag and Hazel looks inside. There is a box of Jaffa cakes, a packet of Bourbon biscuits, a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, a Mars bar.

  ‘She likes Jaffa cakes,’ Hazel says.

  Mum says: ‘We all have to be brave.’

  Olive has been admitted to the Queen’s Medical Centre, to the Royal Princess Margaret General Masonic St Mary’s Hospital. She is still unconscious, and X-rays have revealed extensive head and back injuries. It is possible, it is a possibility, that she may not wake up at all, Mum says. The bag swings between Hazel and her Mum as they both remember, on the way to the swimming pool, sudden traffic cones and a hole in the road. The car spinning round and round and then hits something, a wall or the bottom of a bridge or something. In the front of the car, Hazel and her mother unhurt, then outside the car, watching firemen take twenty minutes to cut Olive from the wreckage of the back seat. Mrs Burns, now in her own kitchen (back at the wrecked car) now in her own kitchen, takes Hazel in her arms and rocks her softly, side to side, forwards and backwards, stroking her hair.