by Pat Barker
‘Did you hear about the burglary?’ she asked, almost falling into the hall.
‘Yes, Beth rang. Justine wasn’t too badly hurt, was she?’
‘No, she’s back home. We thought they’d keep her in, but they didn’t. In fact, she’s gone out.’
Angela sounded breathless. Almost frenetic. ‘Have some coffee,’ Kate said, resigning herself to a late start. She was so nearly there, it was torture to be kept away from the studio, and yet she dreaded this final effort and would grab any excuse to put it off.
‘Everybody keeps asking if she was raped.’
‘She wasn’t?’ Kate asked.
‘No, thank God.’ She took a mug of coffee and gulped the first few mouthfuls down. ‘That’s what Alec thought. When he got to the hospital, they’d taken all her clothes away, but apparently they were just looking for hairs on her sweater – things like that. Or perhaps they thought she’d been raped. Anyway, there she was and Alec couldn’t bring himself to ask her. He couldn’t say the word. He’s been in quite a state. He says he keeps imagining what he’d do to them if he had them tied up or something, helpless. And he feels dreadful about himself. He says it’s like a waking nightmare and the worst part of it is he’s such a gentle man. He’s not like that at all.’
The trouble was, Kate thought, Alec had always thought of himself as a good man. That made him sound smug and horrible, which he wasn’t, but he did tend to assume that in the great war of good and evil he’d always be on the right side, whereas Kate couldn’t help thinking real adult life starts when you admit the other possibility. ‘We’re all a bit like that, aren’t we?’
‘But he’s worked all his life with young criminals like those two, trying to give them a fresh start.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said drily. ‘We fell out about it a couple of weeks ago. You remember?’
‘Oh. Yes, I’d forgotten that.’ An awkward pause. ‘He came to see her last night.’
‘Peter? What did he have to say?’
‘I don’t know. I’d gone home.’
Kate offered her a second cup of coffee, but she waved it aside. ‘No, better not. It just makes me jumpier than I am already. You must be nervous.’
‘You can’t spend your entire life cowering behind locked doors. If you do that, the bastards have won anyway.’ She poured herself another cup, intending to take it across to the studio with her. ‘Did you say Justine had gone out?’
‘Yes. They’ve gone to the Farnes.’
‘She’s with Alec?’
‘No. With Stephen.’ Angela said grudgingly, ‘I must say he’s been very good.’
‘He’ll take care of her.’
A few minutes later Angela left and Kate walked across to the studio, pausing by the pond to look up at the misty hillside. She hoped it cleared for the crossing. So many times she and Ben had set out to go to the Farnes and nearly always at this time of year. Her heart felt full. A distinct, entirely physical sensation. Possess, as I possessed a season, the countries I resign…
They parked by the seawall and walked down to the quayside booths, where he bought the tickets.
‘You know what we’ve forgotten to bring?’ Justine said. ‘Hats.’
‘Why do we need hats? I don’t mind getting wet.’
She smiled. ‘Wait and see.’
It was a rough crossing. The waves were steely-grey with a fine mist of spray flying off them. Their hair and clothes were wet before they left the harbour, but neither wanted to go into the covered cabin, with its fug of human bodies and damp wool. The boat rocked and dipped, wallowing in the hollow of the deeper waves before rising to face the challenge of the next. All the while the black hulking cliffs, the houses and the harbour dwindled into the mist. Ahead there was as yet no sign of the Farnes, no sight of Holy Island either, though by now both should have been visible. The boat had become its own world, in which they turned to face each other, Justine’s hair blown across her mouth, drops of spray clinging like grey pearls to the surface of her skin.
‘Are you a good sailor?’ she yelled above the noise of the engines.
He opened his mouth to reply and gagged as the next sheet of water hit him in the face. ‘Not bad,’ he yelled when he could speak again.
The boat stopped bumping from wave to wave as they edged into the calmer water between cliffs that rose up out of the mist on either side, grey-black walls of wet granite, streaked white with bird lime. Birds lined all the ledges, lifting off, squabbling, resettling. One of them passed over the boat so low he flinched and could have sworn he heard its wings creak. At the top of the cliffs he could see cormorants, with their serpentine necks and crested royal heads, spreading their black wings out to dry.
The boat moved smoothly on between the cliffs until they came to a landing stage. The two sailors – both very young men, fresh-faced, freckled, blue-eyed, obviously brothers, descendants of the Vikings who’d plundered and pillaged and raped all along the coast, and not, emphatically not, of the monks who’d done none of these things – leapt on to the shore, tied up the boat to the staithes and handed the passengers out. An elderly man slipped on the green-slimed stones and would have fallen if it hadn’t been for the supporting hand. Gradually, in twos and threes, they streamed up the hill to the cluster of buildings at the top.
Stephen and Justine had waited for everybody else to get off, before jumping on to dry land. On either side of the path there were terns’ nests on the bare earth, some with chicks, speckled like the surrounding sand and shingle, huddled against the cold. Stephen bent down to look more closely, then straightened up. Immediately, they were above him, the adult terns, white wings angled back, beaks gaping red, claws outstretched as they swooped on to his head. Somehow he didn’t believe they would touch him. They’d just dive-bomb him and go past. But then he felt their claws and beaks jabbing his scalp. He put his hand up and brought his fingers away, smeared with blood. ‘Christ.’
Justine was laughing. ‘C’mon, let’s get away from the chicks.’
They marched at a brisk pace up the hill, Stephen flailing his arms around in a vain attempt to keep off the terns.
They followed the paths around the island. He was startled to see an eider duck sitting on her eggs immediately beside the path, and all the while the terns attacked, hovering inches above his head. A small child, screaming with fear, walked past with her father holding a folded newspaper over her head. ‘It’s not a good idea to bring small children,’ Justine said, which struck him as an understatement. And then they left the terns’ nests behind, and the screeches faded into silence, to be replaced by the squabbling of kittiwakes in their tenement slums.
Gradually the mist thinned and the sun shone more strongly, though their shadows were never more than smudges on the grass. They lay on the edge of a cliff, looking down on the grey and white backs of seagulls to where, far below – he daren’t think how far – the wrinkled sea fretted at the rocks. He was trying to recall a phrase from Ulysses, something about the snot-green, scrotum-tightening sea. Snot green, yes, but also blue, purple, grey, brackish brown, flecked here and there with white, the sleek dark heads of seals rising and falling with the waves. He rolled over and lay on his back, sucking a stem of grass. Justine was staring out to sea, not looking at him, not appearing to be aware that he existed even, and he wondered if she were back in the farmhouse, terrified and alone.
He reached out and touched her arm. She smiled, but went on looking out to sea.
She was thinking about Peter and the bloody roses. When finally she’d gone into the kitchen to look at them, she’d found half a dozen red, tightly furled blooms, each with a length of thin wire wound round the stem and through the bud itself, pinning the petals closed. No matter how much air, light, water, food you gave them, they would never open, but wither and die in the bud. She’d seen roses presented like this before, and had always disliked them, so it was irrational to associate them exclusively with Peter. But she did.
Peter’s ideal
woman would be a doll, she thought, a puppet that would stay in any position you put it in, without life or volition of its own.
Completely the opposite of Stephen, who was so scrupulously careful not to constrain her in any way that he sometimes gave the impression of indifference. Go, he always seemed to be saying. Any time you like. Go.
Though he was looking anxious enough at the moment.
‘Come on,’ she said, getting him by the hand and pulling him to his feet. ‘Let’s go and see the puffins.’
Kate had worked till her neck ached from holding the same position too long, but when, finally, she stopped, the thought crossed her mind that she might have finished. You couldn’t always tell. There was a long period sometimes when you had to inch forward, knowing that one more unnecessary chip of the plaster could set you back three weeks.
Somehow or other she had to recover freshness of vision, to look at this as if she were seeing it for the first time. The secret was to put the critical intelligence to sleep, peel off the hard outer rind and work from the core. If she could have read a detective story, or played a game of chess, and carved simultaneously, that would have done the trick – anything to distract the top layer of the mind – but unfortunately she needed her hands.
She stepped back. It had looked like a fish at one point, on dry land, flapping, mouth open to gasp in the murderous air. Now it was more like a pupa starting to hatch, grave cloths peeling away to reveal new skin. What it didn’t look like, close to at any rate, was a man.
She climbed down from the scaffold, her thighs wobbly underneath her as she reached the floor, as if she’d been on a long voyage and hadn’t got her land legs back. Fearfully, she raised her head. Oh, God. Didn’t look human even from here. Strong, though. She felt its strength. Christ in a nightie it was not.
She went out of the studio, breathed deeply, suffered one of her infrequent cravings for a cigarette, and walked slowly down to the pond. Branches of willow shadowed the mist. A moorhen picked her way delicately through the tall thin reeds at the water’s edge and behind her three chicks, venturing out of the nest perhaps for the first time. Kate watched them, and thought of nothing, only the pleasure of seeing them.
When she turned round, Peter Wingrave was standing directly behind her. She hadn’t heard him arrive, and the shock made her jump.
‘I was just passing,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d look in and see how you were getting on.’
Time had weakened the resentment she’d felt at witnessing his parody, or whatever it was, of her working methods, his attempted invasion of her territory, and she found it perfectly possible to smile and say hello.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I was just having a break.’
He followed her into the kitchen and watched as she made coffee. Inside the house, with the door closed, she remembered the burglary, but she’d never been nervous with Peter, except for that one night. And anyway she didn’t for a moment suppose he was planning to bash her over the head and steal her credit cards. If he was dangerous, it was in more subtle ways than that.
‘Did you hear about Justine?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Beth told me.’
‘I went to see her last night.’
‘How was she?’
‘I don’t know. They’d given her a sedative, she was asleep.’ As he spoke, he clenched his knotted fingers, the knuckles pink, bunched together, like baby rats in a nest. ‘She walked in on them, apparently.’
‘Dangerous situation,’ Kate said, ‘cornering a burglar.’
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder if they’ll catch them?’
‘They might. Alec seemed to think so.’
There was no sound in the room except for the faint hum of the fridge. She had the feeling that whatever she wanted to know now he would tell her. Why he’d gone to prison – everything. So the only question was: did she want to know? No. She didn’t want the distraction from her work. And she felt too that any emotional involvement with Peter would simply give him scope for manipulation. She tapped the edge of her cup. ‘How’s the gardening?’
‘Busy. Always busy this time of year.’
She felt his disappointment. He’d been looking for another host.
‘Oh, I had one stroke of luck – thanks to Stephen – his agent’s taken me on.’
‘Good.’
‘He seems to be quite hopeful about placing the book.’
‘That is good news.’
He was less green about the gills than he’d been a few minutes ago. Looking at him, she came to a decision.
‘Would you like to see it?’ She jerked her head in the direction of the studio.
‘Love to.’ He was already on his feet.
‘I think it’s finished.’
‘Think?’
‘I need to stand back a bit.’
They walked across to the studio, Kate remembering the last time they’d been there together and reminding herself that he didn’t know she’d seen him. He stood in front of the figure for a long time, taking it in. He barely reached the top of its thighs. ‘Do you mind if I move the scaffold?’
‘No, go ahead.’
He pushed it away. Stood back again. ‘My God.’
She smiled. ‘If everybody says that, I’ve succeeded.’
No reply. She realized she’d sounded too flippant. It was always a problem at this point to remember the impact the finished work had on other people, because by this stage she felt nothing. Except tiredness, exasperation, the overwhelming desire to be shot of it.
She stepped right back, pretending to tidy up the tools she’d left lying on the trestle table by the door. Now that Peter was back, it felt as if he’d never left. Perhaps in a way he never had. Certainly she’d gone on thinking about him, had sensed him sometimes in the darkness between the white figures, the dark one, the shadow on the X-ray, who could never be counted no matter how often you looked. He’d insinuated himself so thoroughly into this process that she felt the figure was partly his. She hated thinking that, but inside there, buried as deep as bones in flesh, was the armature that he’d made. The carving was hers, but the shape was his.
Peter turned to her. ‘He hasn’t forgotten anything, has he? Betrayal, torture. Murder. And none of it matters.’
He thought it was about memory. That was interesting, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t even want to look at the figure with him standing there, in case his response contaminated hers.
At last he turned away.
‘So what happens now?’ he asked, as they walked out to his van.
‘It goes to the foundry. I’ll work on it a bit more after it’s cast, and then it’s off to the cathedral.’
‘It’ll leave an awfully big gap. What’ll you do?’
‘Live.’
They shook hands and she watched him walk away. Big hungry strides crunching the gravel, then the familiar cough and sputter of the engine starting up.
From all over the island now little groups of people were making their way back to the landing stage via the tourist information point at the top of the hill, where they bought postcards and film for their cameras. No experience is valid without the accompanying image, Stephen thought, though he bought a postcard of the puffins too.
Then they walked down the hill, enduring further attacks from the terns at every step of the way, and found places in the bow of the boat. The mist was rolling in again, darkening the sea, muffling sounds, like a pad soaked in chloroform pressed down suddenly over nose and mouth. They had to wait for the final passengers. By the time they arrived, breathless, apologetic, holding newspapers over their heads to shield themselves from dive-bombing terns, the mist was thicker than it had been on the journey out. As the boat cast off from the jetty and turned towards land, there was no longer the sensation of steering between high black cliffs, but instead of being alone, wrapped about with clammy white draperies of mist, on the cold, heaving, relentless sea.
At some point Stephen
became aware that the two freckly Vikings who owned the boat were worried. He didn’t know how many of the other passengers had noticed, but certainly something was wrong. One of the brothers was on the radio speaking to somebody on the mainland, and after he’d finished there was a muffled, earnest conversation between them. On Stephen’s right were the parents of the little girl who’d been frightened by the terns. Lowering his voice so they couldn’t hear, he said, ‘They’re in trouble.’
Justine smiled faintly and, also whispering, replied, ‘Yes, I know.’
A few hundred yards further on, the ghostly chromatic cry of a black-backed gull startled them as it appeared from the sky, flashed briefly white above their heads, and vanished into the mist. A second later there was a shuddering of the whole boat and a scraping sound as its keel hit submerged rocks. Everybody looked round with startled stares, for the moment half amused rather than frightened, but then the jar and shudder came again and a sense of something being badly wrong spread round the boat. A small woman with dry chestnut hair clutched her husband’s arm. A group of young men further along seemed more inclined to treat it as a joke.
‘Can you swim?’ he asked Justine.
Keeping her voice light, she said, ‘Like a fish, but there are seven kids, and some of them probably can’t.’
The water would be cold. He doubted if even a strong swimmer would last long. Oh, but it was ridiculous. People don’t die on days out at the seaside, they die in wars, terrorist attacks, all the bloody stupid inane events he’d spent his life covering. He met the gaze of the little girl’s father and they exchanged a flaring of eyebrows. The mother had gone very white, but the little girl prattled on, playing with a plastic pony with a purple mane. This is a wake-up call, he thought. Or a go-to-sleep call, his brain replied, indifferent. He recognized that indifference, the feeling of his life balanced like a feather on the palm of his hand. But then he looked at Justine and thought, no. Not yet.
For a third time the boat scraped across submerged rocks. The brothers made another call to land, and the boat changed direction. Five minutes later, the arm of the harbour became visible as a band of deeper grey in the all-encompassing mist. A hundred yards further on, they could see a huddle of houses, all with their lights on, as the little town gathered around its firesides and contended with the early dark.
