Restoration

by Guy Adams

The ship set sail for a destination it would never reach and Ashe reclined in his cabin.

  15.

  Ashe came awake to a sensation of the boat rocking violently around him. Not another storm? No, the sky was clear…

  "You're awake then?" Ashe looked around, delirious, there was nobody on the boat but that damned gull. Oh… perhaps he hadn't woken up at all.

  The boat continued to shake and he risked leaning over the side to check the water. It was thick with fish, tumbling over one another in their urge to push against the side of the boat.

  "What's got into them?" Ashe said.

  "Me," said the gull. "Who knew I was so powerful? I'm beginning to wonder if there's much I can't do these days."

  Ashe tumbled back into the boat as it shook again. This

  was quite absurd, surely it wasn't the House? Not yet? How could it possibly…

  "I wouldn't worry about it if I were you," said the gull. "Just sit back and dream of shore, at this rate we'll be there in no time."

  16.

  The storm began to rage around the Intrepid. Ashe reluctantly left his cabin in order to play his part in furthering the irritation of his captain.

  "I begin to wonder if you're even remotely capable of sailing this vessel," he shouted over the wind and rain, as he stumbled onto the deck. "I expect we shall all be on the bottom of the ocean before our journey is half finished."

  Hawkins gritted his teeth, rubbing water from his face and hoping to keep his temper under control. "With all due respect sir," he replied, "even the finest sea captains have little control over the weather."

  "I wasn't talking about the 'finest sea captains' Hawkins, I was talking about you. A jumped up tug-boat skipper whose delusions of capability will no doubt be the death of all of us."

  Hawkins wife put her hand on her husband's shoulder and whispered in his ear. No doubt, thought Ashe, she was reminding him to think of the money and keep his calm. Fat chance of that by the time I've finished.

  "Getting directions from your wife now is it?" Ashe gave a hollow chuckle that rattled like poison in his throat. How he wished he could cough it up, but once produced it hung there. "One hopes she has a better sense of direction than you. Given her size perhaps she can simply sniff out the ovens and stew pots of dry land, eh?"

  That did it, as Ashe had known it would. Hawkins would take his own insults – begrudgingly but he would take them – any directed at his wife however were more than the man could stand.

  "Enough!" he shouted, grabbing Ashe by his lapels and forcing him back against the wall of the wheelhouse. "You skulk in my ship like a plague rat, you insult me and my crew… I will not stand for it!"

  Ashe summoned up one final grin. "With your skills I'm surprised you're not used to a bit of criticism."

  Hawkins roared and dragged him below deck. He yanked him into his own cabin and hurled him at an easy chair in the corner. He yanked open a drawer on his desk and counted out half of the money Ashe had paid him and hurled it across the room. "Half back and you can go aground at Indonesia. I won't suffer your company for a moment longer than that."

  "Half?" Ashe utterly deflated now simply nodded, took his money and returned to his own cabin. He felt every inch the Judas.

  He sat down in the dark, holding his empty revolver in his hand. In a few hours, once Hawkins' wife had retired, he would enter her cabin and threaten to shoot her unless they completed their voyage. That would be the final transgression that would see Hawkins cast him off in the lifeboat, hurling his possessions after him. He was suddenly hit by a violent urge to throw up. It wasn't the rocking of the boat but his own churning self-disgust. Whatever humanity he might have consoled himself with possessing after his youth as a monster it was draining away fast. He gripped the edge of his window, shoving his face out into the driving rain. He let the cold storm beat his face, feeling he deserved every icy lash. He waited like that until it was time to go and force history at the point of a gun.

  17.

  The lifeboat bounced its way across the water, Ashe rolling inside it. The gull squawked on the prow like a Roman centurion commanding the slaves to row. I'm dreaming, Ashe insisted to himself, I'm dying and this is my mind's way of sending me off in delirium rather than agony.

  The gull cocked its head to look at him. "You just keep telling yourself that," it said.

  18.

  And then Ashe was off the Intrepid, Hawkins raging at him from the side of his ship. A tatty rug was hurled into the gathering wind. It flapped and curled, as if trying to master the art of flight before hitting the water with a dejected slap.

  Ashe tapped into every ounce of fear and disgust he could find – which was considerable – and roared his own anger into the wind. He couldn't lay a claim to the words, they were dragged from too deep inside. It was soul noise, a primal bellowing that seemed to call the storm clouds back from where they had been running to. Demanding they stay and fight, demanding they piss on him from their heavens. They were happy to oblige. More rubbish from the market stalls of Madras came over the side of the boat: a particularly inept painting of a sunset that the wind caught and – as if in disgust at the unskilled painter – smashed against the side of the Intrepid. A bust of a fat-lipped woman hit the waves with its forehead. A wooden sculpture of a startled lion bellyflopped and then fought to stay afloat.

  Ashe ignored it all, there was only one artifact he needed to see. He had left it in pride of place right in the middle of his bed, certain that Hawkins would find it.

  And now it came: as the sky churned a glint of lightning showed him the puzzle box in Hawkins' hand. This is it, he thought, all over now…

  Thunder kicked the night in the belly and the Intrepid rolled. Hawkins vanished from sight. "Falling now," Ashe whispered, "tumbling into the ship, hitting his head…"

  The ship vanished and the sea rose and then came together, clapping its salty hands, impressed with the trick.

  "Travel safe, Hawkins," Ashe said and then fell to the side of the lifeboat as it was thrown in the air. Hs head hit the wood and he fell limp, a passenger at the mercy of the storm.

  19.

  Ashe wasn't moving. He raised his neck to see a heavenly tree line a few feet away. Clambering over the side of the boat he fell onto a bed of gently twitching fish. The boat was surrounded by them, carried up on the shallow waves and left to bake and choke on the sand.

  "I was dreaming," he said, pulling himself away from the boat. "I must have been dreaming."

  His wet face kissed the hot sand and he retched salt water.

  Behind him a solitary seagull climbed into the endless Indonesian sky.

  INTERLUDE

  Mario Trusts the Moon

  "…do you think?"

  Mario leaned back in his chair and tried to focus. The red wine in his veins and tobacco smoke in his eyes made it difficult. The bar was too damn noisy for his liking. The jukebox sang eighties rock – all power chords and synthesizer – while twenty-somethings shouted at one another. The espresso machine behind the bar told everyone to shush every couple of minutes. They paid it no attention. It wasn't a big place, kitted out like a wine cellar – all red brick and dark wood – and the noise coalesced into one big fist that pounded Mario's drunken head until he wondered if he might not just crawl under the table and die rather than put up with another moment of it. The boy had said something…

  "What was that?" Mario shouted, possibly too loudly, the boy flinching as if he'd slapped one of those babypink cheeks of his. What was his name? He was damned if he could remember…

  "I said that many critics feel that Never Trust the Moon is the most accomplished film of your career, would you agree with that?"

  Mario looked at him, all bum-fluff and hair gel, what the fuck was he talking about? Sitting there fresh from some media course or another… a head full of Fellini or Cocteau and all of a sudden an expert…

  "No. I would not."

  He took another large mouthful of Rioja –
knowing full well he'd had enough and that it was all downhill from here – and lit a cigarette, not caring whether the smoke irritated his companion or not.

  "Oh… well, which would you choose?" The boy glanced down to his Dictaphone, making sure the thing was turned on. Well, good luck to him tonight, he'd be lucky to hear a thing over the rest of the noise. Behind the bar someone sent a tray flying and breaking glass and laughter was added to the mix… Mario flinched, eyes snapping tight… Jesus why couldn't the world shut its goddamn mouth for a minute?

  "The best film of my career, the film of which I am most proud, is the one I'm making whenever you ask me the question… You're talking as if I have no career anymore, you're talking as if I've made all my films…!" The boy was moving back in his seat and Mario began to be aware that he was shouting, that people close by were turning in his direction. "Never Trust the Moon was my third film for Christ's sake… nearly ten years ago! You saying that the movies I've made since weren't worth shit?"

  "Well… no… many would agree that Impulse was something of a return to form, the opening murder in particular…"

  "I'll re-enact it here and now if you like…" Mario shouted, washing his vitriol down with more wine and stoppering it in his chest with a grin. "If some kind soul will find me a pair of long-bladed scissors…"

  The boy stopped talking and stared at him, no idea what to say.

  Mario laughed and got to his feet. "That would sell your book well wouldn't it? If people thought the poor author had died writing it?" He stumbled, the wine doing its job. Grabbing the table for support, he sent the glasses flying and ended up falling into the table next to them.

  "Clumsy idiot!" one of the drinkers shouted, getting to his feet, ready to put Mario out on the street if he had to.

  Mario looked him up and down; he was a big man, blond hair, German probably. He reckoned he could take him.

  "Silly Deutschland, you have no idea who you're talking to!" He stood nose to nose with the man and grinned. "It'll take more than your piss and wind to put me down!"

  The man punched him and Mario fell backwards onto the boy's lap, startled and bleeding from the nose.

  "I think." he mumbled, the blood wetting his lips, "that it may be time to go home."

  A few minutes later he was out on the street, drinking cold air like espresso and begging for sobriety. He touched his sore nose gently, hoping the kraut bastard hadn't broken it.

  "Fuck." He looked at his bloody fingers and stumbled off the kerb forcing a girl on a scooter to swerve out of his way.

  "Asshole!" she shouted, long dark hair waving in front of her face as she turned to stick her middle finger up at him.

  He blew her a kiss and stooped into a half bow but the pressure in his nose made him straighten again quickly.

  Definitely broken.

  It wasn't that long a walk back to his apartment thank God – he was sure neither his head nor stomach could deal with taking a tram – but just long enough to brush some of the drunkenness from him; to pull him back from the certainty of heaving up in the gutter and making even more of a fool of himself.

  But then he was fast approaching both the age and attitude where looking foolish no longer bothered him. Pride was for the young, for those still naïve enough to think that the world cared. Besides, when you made your living – thinly at times, these were not cash-rich days – as a director of horror pictures you were used to a degree of adverse criticism and having your personal worth questioned. As much as many audiences loved to be shocked – or even disgusted – out of their cinema seats you would be a fool to think the world viewed you with anything more than idle curiosity at best, downright revulsion at worst (Mario had once been described by a particularly respectable newspaper as "an immoral peddler of worthless trash", a quote he had thrilled over at the time).

  Traffic was light. The occasional headlight picked him out against the worn Turin stone as people made their way home to their beds and lovers, to normal lives of office work and mortgage payments. He paused for a while on the Vittorio Emanuele Bridge and stared down at the rushing waters of the Po. He remembered the news items of a few years ago, the panic about the high quantity of cocaine traces in the water from the jubilant piss of the local users. Perhaps he should go and drink a few mouthfuls, see if it made him feel better…

  Laughing he cut across the road and through the square, daring a few sleeping pigeons not to fly from his heavy heels.

  By the time he neared his apartment block his jovial mood was on the wane, replaced with a heavy head and a need for sleep – something he might manage to do now without the room spinning and his guts rolling, the wine in his system having faded to a dull warmth.

  He unlocked the front door and cursed under his breath as he nearly knocked a fern over in the foyer, the lights were out and he was forced to inch his way towards the central elevator using memory and caution. He'd give the building superintendent an earful if he could be bothered come the morning, how difficult was it to make sure the bulbs were replaced once in a while? It wasn't as if the residents didn't pay for such things…

  Mind you, the place was half-empty these days with people moving out to the country or one of the more modern developments. It had been "desirable" once upon a time. He'd moved in after the success of Can You See Me? – his second full feature – had fleshed his wallet out enough to afford it. He'd bought the place, full of aspirations and a desire for a city life of parties and restaurant dining. He'd been here ever since, never able to afford to move further up the social ladder but refusing to go down either, not one rung. Meanwhile the place had dwindled as one by one the residents had left at a greater rate than those coming in, sooner or later he'd be here on his own while the developers circled… fuck it, maybe they'd give him a decent price for the place.

  He found the concertina gate of the elevator, yanked it open and clambered inside. He pulled his cigarette lighter out of his pocket and lit it so that he could see the control box. The yellow flame threw a spider web of shadows from the elevator grille across the tiled walls. He pushed the button for the sixth floor and steadied himself as the elevator began to rise, the clunking of the motor and the squeal of cable sounding far too loud as it echoed around the atrium of the building. His mind wandered, thoughts of the next day's shooting schedule, the book the boy was writing about him – he'd have to apologise of course, he may be beyond pride but that didn't mean his ego was numb to the idea of a celebratory volume on his work – the possibility of his broken nose...

  The lift came to a halt. He made to leave before realising that the damn thing was between floors.

  "For Christ's sake…" he stabbed at the button again, demanding it took him to his bed.

  The lift shuddered and he gave a startled yell that he hoped nobody was awake to hear. It shook again, this time violently enough to throw him to the floor. He rolled into a sitting position just as the lift jolted back into life and climbed the last few feet. As it came to a halt, Mario began to wonder if he hadn't been drinking far more than he should. The view on the other side of the gate was not the sixth floor of his apartment building, it was a bright, gleaming shopping centre. He got to his feet and yanked the gate open. As he stumbled out a tannoy croaked into life. "Passengers wishing to take the 4.15 from Paddington should be warned that murders are taking place on that service. If they do wish to travel they should ensure they have an alibi and an up to date will and testament."

  Mario's English was rusty but good enough. Not that the announcement made the least sense to him.

  "Where the fuck am I?" he wondered, stumbling out of his old life forever.

  PART SIX

  Where People Go To Die (2)

  1.

  Captain Warren Shepard had seen countless horrors in his career. He had visited domestic disturbances where women hung off the arms of their abusive husbands, black-eyed, snotty-nosed and wailing their adoration for the men that treated them as punchbags. He had seen kids of no
more than sixteen, glass-eyed and cold, their nostrils caked with cheap-shit coke that had stopped their parent's hearts as surely as their own. Two years into the job he had broken down by the side of the road at the sight of a child's sneaker, blood-stained and weighted with more than just a shed sock. The broken glass and burned rubber on the tarmac had been gathered around the mangled frame of a kid's push-bike. The rest of the body stuck to the underside of a Lincoln Continental further up the road. It was the first – and last – time that Shepard had shed tears on the job. After awhile you just had to wall those emotions up. They came out in the end of course, over a drink or in the middle of the night when all you can hear is the cicadas outside and the gentle rise and fall of your wife's breathing. Nothing stays walled up forever. But on the job, when wearing that uniform, you become immovable. You let the civilians wail and curse and beg their God for an answer, that's their job, it's not yours.