A Cage of Bones

by Jeffrey Round

  They thanked him for his honesty, assuring him he could tell them anything whenever he wanted. His parents seemed relieved, as though they’d been let off the hook. Warden thought it a strangely passive acceptance, almost a refusal of acceptance. Whatever he might declare himself, they seemed to say, he couldn’t change their prior notions of him.

  The day before Christmas, he took Lisa shopping. Stores hummed with the buzz of holiday shoppers and electronic carols. The streets were filled with the bright lights of mercantilism. In a jewellery store on Bloor St. Warden asked to see a strand of pearls behind a counter. The clerk’s face said he couldn’t be bothered with the whims of youngsters and didn’t care to disturb his display for them. Warden insisted.

  “Would Mom like these?” he asked Lisa, holding them in the light once the clerk had brought them out.

  “I’ll take them if she doesn’t.” Lisa’s eyes flashed. “What woman wouldn’t die for a set of basic black and pearls?”

  The clerk sniffed when asked the price. Warden pondered the sum, bringing out an expensively crafted wallet. The clerk suddenly became more obliging.

  “Will you be paying by Visa or MasterCard, sir?”

  Warden looked over at Lisa. “Cash,” he said, pulling out a sheaf of bills.

  He pocketed the necklace and they left, laughing as they went.

  “What an old fart!” Lisa screamed with glee. “Did you see the look on his face when you pulled out that wad? Let’s do it again!”

  In a bookshop on Yonge St. they browsed through fashion magazines looking for pictures of Warden, but all they found was a shot of Joe on a bicycle, smiling at a girl looking at him over her shoulder. He told Lisa about Joe and Jimmy and others he’d worked with.

  “It’s hard to think of you as famous, Ward-boy. That’s something only other people are, not my own brother,” she said. “But I’ll get over it. Let’s find a bar.”

  “You’re not old enough to go in bars,” he protested.

  “And you’re too young to be such a prude. Let’s go.”

  She took his arm as they walked up the street to a glitzy hangout for the city’s glamour set. They deposited themselves at the bar, packages spilling onto chairs beside them. Warden looked at his sister: hair neatly cut, fingernails trimmed and polished. She’d changed a great deal in less than a year. It was as though she’d skipped adolescence, going straight from a tomboy to a young woman.

  “What else did you do exciting while you were gone? We missed you. Did mom tell you we visited Aunt Emily in Florida?”

  It was all coming out in a rush. He smiled at her eagerness. She was pleased to have him all to herself, away from family and friends and sharing something adult. He ordered for them both, but refused her alcohol, playing big brother. She protested, but barely.

  Around them, the bar had filled with anxious faces that seemed in a desperate search for something. Lisa focused on him. “Did you try any drugs?” she asked conspiratorially.

  “Well…yes, actually. I think it was cocaine. Somebody gave it to me after a show. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “I tried it once, too. I didn’t like it. Ecstasy’s better.”

  This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. Did that make him a bad influence? Not if she’d already tried it, he guessed. She toyed with her glass of soda waiting for him to speak. What else to tell her? What had been important to him at her age?

  “How’s school?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Pretentious. I just don’t get the other kids. All they care about is who’s going out with who … whom. I mean, I’m only seventeen. I’m not depressed because I don’t have a steady boyfriend and I don’t think about marriage all the time, though I slept with this Tony guy a couple of times. It’s not a problem for me but these girls are, like, suicidal if they don’t have a Friday night date. Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

  “You’re sleeping with guys at your age? How do you get condoms?”

  “Oh—take a pill. You sound like Mom.”

  He was incredulous. “You told Mom you slept with somebody?”

  “Relax, will you? I’m not stupid. No, I didn’t tell Mom about Tony and I got the condoms from Louise. What about you? Did you meet anybody in Italy?”

  “Well…”

  “Come on—out with it,” she demanded.

  “You may find this hard to believe, but I did sleep with somebody…”

  “Just a somebody? Name and occupation, please.”

  She was mocking him. He took a breath. “It was with another guy.”

  “And…?”

  “Well, that’s it—I slept with another guy, Lisa.”

  “Yeah—and? Was it, like, good or what?”

  Warden looked at his sister. It occurred to him he might be missing something. He wondered if his parents had prompted her.

  “Do I know you?” he asked. “I mean, I just told you I slept with someone of the same sex and you ask me was it good?”

  She looked at him with her most worldly look and shook her head. “It’s a known fact that three quarters of the population is bi-sexual to some degree or other and the rest probably wishes they were.”

  “I think your estimate may be a bit high, little sister.”

  “Big brother, you’re not nearly as cool as I thought you were.” She took his hand. “But I still love you. Anyway, I heard Mom and Dad talking about it yesterday. Mom’s totally cool about it. It seems they’ve suspected for some time, but now that you’re a success Dad says it isn’t his place to tell you what to do any more, so you’re off the hook.”

  She put her drink down on the counter. He watched it slide across the shiny surface.

  “Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” she said.

  “Like you’re blowing my mind?”

  “Eat it up.”

  18

  For the next few months Warden travelled the continent. In January, he flew to Paris to be considered by a prospective client. They liked him so much they used him immediately in a campaign wearing jeans, a checkered shirt and bandanna set in a mythic landscape with an American flag for the sky.

  In February he was profiled in an article touting the half-dozen upcoming male models worth watching. When asked about his work, he spoke intelligently about the career he’d found himself thrown into by accident. He no longer thought of himself as simply a tool in the hands of others more knowledgeable than him: he now had opinions on the subject, having gained insight into the power his image carried.

  His face began to weave a mythology all its own, taking on a dimension off the pages of the magazines. He was stopped not infrequently by passersby who recognized his likeness. A woman accosted him in Bond Street one day to ask if he’d appeared in magazine advertisements.

  “I knew it!” she exclaimed, delighted with her talent for observation. “Actually,” she confided, “you look much taller in person.”

  By March he was exhausted from the hectic pace of shows and photo-shoots. His looks, normally healthy and glowing, had taken on an unrested appearance. Both Smart and Calvino urged him to take a hiatus. He’d been going strong for nearly a year.

  “I know just the thing,” Rebekah said one afternoon in the drawing room of her flat.

  They were sitting under a ceiling adorned with Ivan’s newly-painted acanthus leaves and rosy-cheeked cherubs. Outside, the sky was an optimistic blue. There’d been a break that week in the relentless greyness that constituted English winter. An early spring or at least a continuation of mild weather looked quite possible.

  “Why don’t you take a trip to my cottage in Whitstable? You can stay a week or two—however long you like. That way you can get out of the city altogether.”

  She went on before he could accept or protest.

  “No, no really. It’s quite small—just a stone cottage, actually, but it’s right on the seashore and it’s so restful and quiet this time of year. It should be just what you need.”

 
Her eyes begged him to take her up on the offer, as though it would in some way cement their friendship.

  “All right,” Warden said. “Can I go this weekend?”

  “Any time, dear boy,” she said, delighted he’d accepted. “It’s only two hours by train. And the best part is you’ll be all alone. Just the medicine you need!”

  Inside Victoria Station, gothic shapes breathed sooty smoke as loudspeakers boomed out departure times and the curious-sounding names of destinations. The cavernous interior echoed with conversation and the shushing of engines.

  It had been raining all afternoon, small leaks in the high ceilings compounding the greyness dripping inside and out. The pigeons inside the station seemed conscious that the darkness was an early deceitful one and continued wheeling about under the dome of the roof. Warden waited in one of the many slowly moving queues for his ticket. The clerk handed it to him and pointed off to the right.

  “Platform five, lad. If you hurry you’ll just be able to catch it,” he said.

  Two trains sat idling, one on either side of the track. There was nothing to indicate which was his. Warden looked around for a conductor. The other people clambering on board seemed to know where they were going. He asked a man in a raincoat if he knew which train went to Whitstable, and then another, but no one knew for sure. A whistle blew and the train nearest began to come alive segment by segment. He jumped onto the moving platform, his backpack knocking about as he climbed the steps.

  The door closed behind him with a bang. Inside, most of the seats were taken. A face caught his attention. Not warming or inviting, but almost with an absence of expression, a withholding, except for a pair of haunted, burnt eyes. Short coppery hair shaved close over the ears lent the face a tough appearance. Somehow, the hardness didn’t mar his beauty, but rather enhanced it.

  The train began picking up speed in response to a series of staccato whistles above.

  “Excuse me,” Warden said. “Do you know if this train goes to Whitstable?”

  The young man looked up. “How the fuck should I know, mate?” he said, without emphasis or interest. Then he turned away.

  Warden watched the lean face with its taut cheekbones turn to look out the window as if across a great distance. The eyes stared straight ahead, glowing with the pale acetylene reflection of a flame in ice.

  A young woman seated nearby turned. “Yes,” she said quietly. “This train stops at Whitstable.”

  Warden wasn’t sure if she’d taken pity on him because of his accent or because of the rudeness of the young man wedged into the corner in a leather jacket like dried papyrus, black military boots bunched up on the seat across from him. The face looked up again with a glance that might have been guilt or acquiescence, but he didn’t move his feet to offer Warden a seat.

  That was the extent of the exchange. Warden continued down the aisle till he found an empty place. Even with his back turned he felt the other boy’s presence agitating, almost lifting him out of his seat. When he turned to glance at the seat by the door, its occupant remained defiant and aloof, staring across icy distances of his own making.

  The train stopped regularly at a handful of industrial towns strung along the countryside in the dull afternoon. Warden lost himself in a magazine and didn’t turn around until he heard the muffled whistle dozing above as the conductor came by to announce his stop. He stood and hoisted his pack onto his shoulders, making his way to the door. The other had already gone, leaving his seat empty, the window without anyone to stare out at its passing view. He felt relieved but also strangely disappointed, as though he’d hoped to find something more in the harsh unsmiling face.

  He disembarked onto a platform where shapes suggesting benches and gates hovered in the surreal fog of evening. Lamps gleamed like candle flames within a fringe of shadows. To his surprise, he saw real flames in the glowing bulbs, as though he’d stepped off the train into a previous century.

  He set out following the globes of light along winding streets. Homes glowed behind curtains, intact with the warmth of private sentiments and invisible inhabitants. He imagined Victorian furniture and kindly neighbours living placid peaceful lives. The smell of salt hung in the air. Not far off he heard the gravely hush of the sea as he reached the stone cottage at number 13 Island Wall.

  The dwelling was a well-preserved doll’s house of neatly ordered furniture: a hand-carved table, wooden rockers, and shelves for china and books that centred round a fireplace. A narrow staircase led to a second floor with two small bedrooms and a coldwater bath. The air was damp, nearly as cool inside as out. The house seemed to be pressing its pale blue walls toward him as if warming its hands at a fire long cold and now rekindled.

  He lit the fireplace. Rebekah had warned him there was no other heat, electricity having just been installed the previous year. He took stock of the pantry’s few provisions, mostly boxes of hard biscuits and preserves. In a small freezer he found two meat pies and took one out to thaw. By the time his tour of discovery was over the cottage had begun to fill with the scent of burning wood. He heated his supper and read a volume of poetry before going to bed. The vacant pulsing of waves lulled him as he climbed under the soft down covers, thinking he could stay awake all night. Then he fell asleep.

  He woke early. From the window he saw how close he was to the water’s edge, a stone’s throw from wooden buildings and wharves wreathed in nets. The beach was a field of fist-sized stones. Trudging over them felt like walking on ball bearings. Fish skeletons lodged between rocks like long spiny combs, while gulls wheeled overhead looking for fish not yet beached. Waves dragged in and withdrew abruptly. There was no one about. The cold was eating through his sweater by the time he returned.

  He lit the fire and made a breakfast of hard biscuits and jam. He would remember to buy eggs and cereal and milk when he went out. The radio played a mournful Sibelius tone poem that suited the dismal grey landscape. At 10 o’clock he went out again and found a grocery. Warden had imagined everyone in such an ornamental town to be friendly and was glad not to be disappointed. From the grocer’s wife he got directions for the bus to Canterbury.

  He passed the houses that had looked so warm and inviting the night before. He’d half-expected to find the roadways bustling with horses and carts, but real cars passed him instead. People walked by in ordinary dress, yet somehow they seemed different from their counterparts in London, as if they’d been untouched by the passage of time in this quiet backwater.

  On every other corner sat a small antique shop, as though the town’s air of antiquity might be found inside on their shelves. At one intersection, a pub mirrored a church set across from it like rivals in trade. As he walked along, the town’s inhabitants stared at Warden, trying to place him in their mental geography. Finally, recognizing him for a stranger, they would smile and nod.

  A double-decker bus took him along hilly roads past fields of black bracken. He sat atop as the vehicle teetered and tottered toward its destination. Canterbury itself was a fairy town with a funny Lilliputian people who held medieval associations for him. Neither the architecture nor its inhabitants did anything to dispel the illusion of time’s leap backward into itself.

  Warden found the gates of the great cathedral, a relic of living time that gave the feeling of life lived at immense distances. He stood beneath the brittle bones of pillars and arches vaulting like ribs on the ceiling of the church. A stone-carved scroll listed all the Archbishops of Canterbury, beginning with Saint Augustine in 597 A.D. His mind was stretched to the limit trying to comprehend such vastness, like encompassing the universe with a naked eye.

  The cathedral was calm, unmindful of the speckled drift of tourists whose footsteps tapped on marble steps like raindrops on pewter. He wandered through the sleeping place of royalty and religious heads, their likenesses carved on the tombs and walls. Statues stood draped in flowing robes of stone, their expressions stiffened as though posing for a portrait.

  He walked among prop
hets seized and stupefied in their issue, an hourglass sifting through history thick with the pale moss of time. Jet streams of stone rose like knotted roots, twisting and winding to the ceiling echoing with the hallelujahs of marbled saints.

  Warden stepped aside to avoid a rush of school children. As he turned he found himself facing the haunted, incisive gaze of the young man on the train. He felt as though he were wrestling with a spirit as he stared into the cold grey eyes that seemed to be laughing at him.

  “So you found your stop, then?”

  “Yes…I found it.”

  “No thanks to me, I suppose.”

  “Yes, well…I found it.”

  “You just said that—you don’t need to stand there looking stupid over it.”

  Warden had no idea how to respond to his rudeness in the quiet of the cathedral. Or any place else, for that matter.

  “Do you like tombs?” the young man asked, his face as cryptic as the stone masks around them.

  “It’s interesting—all this history,” Warden said.

  “They’re very old. Once you’re gone you’re a long time dead.”

  Warden took this for a sign of humour. Perhaps the frozen flame in his eyes betrayed an inward gentleness.

  “We don’t have things as old as this in my country. Except for a few rocks.”

  “Well, you will someday.”

  A smile flashed, brilliant and unexpected, startling as a shooting star.

  “Are you from Canterbury?” Warden asked.

  “Not far from here. I come back to visit now and then. Somehow it seems more natural in here with everyone lying down. It’s prettier than graveyards, though God knows they’d be more useful making fodder for the grass and trees.”

  Warden found his humour as enigmatic as his behaviour. They drifted along together almost by accident. Emotions flickered across the other boy’s face as if there were storm clouds in his soul, reflecting nothing, finally. They stood at the entrance, having come the full length of the cathedral. The young man held out his hand as though a decision had just been rendered in Warden’s favour.