Light Errant (2 page)

No room for my sister's ghost to reclaim what had been hers. Sometimes I felt her there despite all the years and all the miles I'd laid down between us now; sometimes there were hard fingers laid over mine, cold breath on my neck and an indomitable will set against me, hissing
mine!

Only if I were alone, though, never with company riding pillion. If I were feeling fatuous, I might claim hence the two girlfriends: to double my chances of escaping a haunting, each time I drove. I seldom went anywhere on the bike these days, after all, without one girl or the other; and
quod erat demonstrandum
, the effect obviously explained the cause, the end justified the means. Of course it did.

No doubt I also ate garlic only to keep the vampires away. It worked, after all; the vampires were keeping many leagues away from me, lurking back in Transylvania. I knew, I'd interviewed a couple of their victims...

o0o

Actually, of course, I believed in ghosts no more than I did in vampires, and my sister did not, did
not
ride at my back even when no other girl did. It only felt that way when my mind slipped a gear, when I forgot to remember that I was a free spirit these days, not at all bound to the past or to the sad, fucked-up boy I used to be. Born a twin, I was a singleton now, all alone in a wide, wide world; and if I chose to double up on lovers, it was a choice I'd made and a risk I'd taken for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with what lay so far behind me.

A risk come home to roost now, seemingly; but not seemingly with malevolent intent. Only because there was a need, Sallah had a problem and Marina thought maybe I could help, though God alone knew why or how. Sallah I guessed had demurred, Marina insisted; and I knew myself, Marina's insistence was not a thing to be lightly put aside. Nor, though, was Sallah's ordinarily-strict demurral. Hence the two of them here together, Marina making sure of an uncertain victory. Otherwise no doubt they'd have kept apart and let me go on dating each in turn, thinking in my naïvety that neither one knew about the other...

Had they been going in for comparative studies, I wondered: dark head and darkly golden bent gigglingly close in a café, murmuring about my misdeeds and making wicked recommendations, each to the other?

Maybe they had, but it didn't matter. What mattered was here and now, both girls on the bike behind me, Sallah in trouble and something perhaps that I could do to help. Never mind about the past—
never ever
—nor the future either, which of the girls if either one would keep me. Their choice, I thought it would be, and me no more than an acquiescent; I hoped it wouldn't matter too much to me, which way they chose. Doubted that, but hoped none the less. Best I could manage: but what more can anyone proffer to the future, what more convincing than hope?

o0o

Home—where we were heading, this risk realised, with roosting on its mind—was a room in the centre of town, ten minutes' walk from anywhere that counted, ten minutes' drive from work. Six months I'd been there now, or a little longer. The house actually belonged to a senior lecturer at the college; he usually let the room to a student, but I'd landed lucky with this as with the job: a contract not honoured, an unexpected vacancy after Christmas and suddenly there I was, free, capable and willing. I hadn't signed up for the next year's teaching yet, but I thought that probably I would. I liked it here. Great food, great people, north coast so no tourists but sun enough for anyone, even sun enough for me who fizzed and sparkled in the light but lost it all at nightfall...

Even with my quiet deceits exposed, I still thought I might stay. If the girls would let me.

In all truth, my landlord probably hadn't noticed too much difference between letting to me and letting to a student. The college boys puttered around on mopeds for the most part, where I thundered on a big BMW; that aside, young men are young men, and I still had some catching-up to do. I played music at antisocial hours, I had rowdy room-parties, I brought girls home for the night or more often for the siesta (it made for less trouble at home, they said; privately I suspected they preferred it, for the tingle they could catch off my skin even in broken sunlight, that just wasn't the same after dark) and I came into school sometimes looking more bedraggled and hung over than my charges. No one had complained, though—yet—and they had at least offered me that second year, so I had to be doing something right.

o0o

The town filled a headland with bays on either side. Deep water to the west gave it a harbour for the fishing fleet, a massive freezing-plant, other industries throwing muck into the heavy, sweaty air; to the east was the long curve of the beach with the promenade above it, open-air stalls and a funfair at the end, also the college campus just beyond.

Squeezed between the two, the old town was all narrow streets and high stone walls, dark shopfronts and no pavements, unexpected corners and sudden surprises.

As where I lived, which might not surprise the locals but still got me every time, known and anticipated and none the less startling. On a street like all the others, tight-arsed and dingy and unforthcoming, making no promises, there was a jeweller and a baker and a gloomy ungated arch to separate them. I turned the bike under the arch, saw the light at the end of the tunnel; eight, ten yards of murk and dazzle and we came out the other side into a courtyard bright with flowers in earthenware tubs, hard with light and shadow on the whitewashed walls.

The girls slipped off as I held the bike steady for them, each of them knew this routine; then I parked in the cool, or the best approximation I could find, the corner that would get no more sun today. Gave the bike a little rub on its petrol tank, not so much a polish as a caress or a touch for luck; and it still seemed strange to me sometimes that I'd never thought to give it a name, we were that close, we'd been so far together.

I stood in the shadow, the girls were waiting in the sun; and as I came back to them both reached for a hand to hold, and this too was routine, only that there were two of them here today and barely enough hands to go around. Even Sallah's mouth twitched into something of a smile as she caught Marina's eye, as they sorted out silently between them who went left and who went right.

Sensitised to it now, I felt the little kick in each of them as they touched and clung, as my sundizzy blood passed on its charge. Sometimes I could feel maybe a little resentful, that they loved me for my side-effects and not myself; but
smarten up, Macallan
, what's personality if it isn't the sum of our side-effects? And besides, they didn't love me at all, and it really didn't matter. I didn't love them either. We were just good bunkmates, nothing more...

Had been just good bunkmates, or so I'd thought. So I'd thought I wanted. Today, obviously, was nothing to do with bunking. Something more there was, then, after all; I had an uncomfortable feeling in my gut that they were about to call in a presumptive debt, and what could I do but pay up?

o0o

My room in the house had its own entrance, at the top of an iron staircase that spiralled up one corner of the courtyard. There were geraniums in pots on every step, which made climbing it a hazard in the drunken dark, and an exercise in strict single file even now. We went up hand in hand, though, Marina leading: and this was how it always was with either girl individually, we went up linked but she led me and always I led Sallah.

Barely space for three of us on the little landing at the top, and here too an established routine played itself out. I wasn't allowed to let go of either girl's hand; it was Marina who grinned with an extra wickedness today as she slipped her fingers into my pocket and fished for the keys, as she worked the door open one-handed and tugged us all inside.

Routine said we should cross the threshold kissing; at least she didn't insist on that. Instead she let me go and took Sallah from me also, took both her hands and pulled her over to the bed. Marina sprawled, Sallah sat neatly, tightly on the edge, her small feet barely reaching the floor. They talked in soft Spanish, too fast for me to follow. Figuring that meant my attention was not immediately required, I went over to the corner of the room, where forethought had laid a bottle of rosado in my washbasin, keeping cool in water. Sighing one more time for the afternoon that wasn't going to happen, I fished it out and fetched three glasses from a cupboard.

Observant little creature of virtue that she was, Sallah hardly ever drank anything stronger than coffee, and never where she might be seen by another believer. The occasional glass of wine, though, with an infidel or two, that didn't seem to be a problem: like other things forbidden to her—like the conjunction of bodies on a shuttered afternoon, an animal act without benefit of law or blessing—she would give it as much solemn attention as she gave to her prayers or her cooking or her English lessons, and take as much pleasure from the doing of it as she did from the taste or the touch or the tingle. And as much pleasure again from doing it not, back in the bosom of her family. It wasn't a Catholic-style guilt thing, she didn't sin the better to repent after; I thought it was a control thing mostly, Sallah demonstrating to herself that she did govern her own life, that even her religion was of her choosing and its rules subject to her willing acceptance, not she to their arbitrary diktat.

Here in my room, a little light or sometimes concentrated sinning was second nature to us both. Today I didn't even ask, I just poured her a glass along with Marina and myself. I thought she needed it. If she disagreed, the steely gears of her mind would lock that decision into place, and she'd set the glass aside and never think more about it.

Ordinarily, at least. That was my expectation, but I'm good at getting things wrong. Scary sometimes how firm she could be, how certain in what seemed to me a highly debatable world; scary today how doubtful she seemed, how hesitant, how needful. There was a tremble in her fingers when I passed her the wine. I cupped my own hands around hers for a moment and pressed gently, warm palms against cold fingers against cool beaded glass. Her smile was unconvincing, her eyes were not. Ridiculously big always in her small, fine-boned face, today they were to die in, deep dark pools of danger rimmed with red where she'd spent half the night crying by the look of her. Crying silently, I was sure, crying face-down into her pillow not to wake anyone else, not to worry her family...

I kissed her fleetingly, squeezed her hands again and went to fetch Marina's wine, and my own.
Autre temps, autre moeurs
: if this had panned out the way I'd planned it, I might have been sinking to the floor at her feet right now in one of those deliberate, delicious moments of delay, resting my head against her thigh, feeling her long fingers in my hair teasing and twisting, starting to tug...

But the two girls filled the bed: space enough for three, perhaps, but emotional room there was not. I retreated to the window, and perched there.

“Come on, then,” I said softly. “Who's going to tell me about it?”

Actually, I already knew the answer to that. Sallah came to me for private tuition, and she worked hard, but her English wasn't strong enough to hold against such tension as I could see in her now. Nor could my Spanish keep up anywhere off the phrase-book paths of dalliance, even if it could have handled her immigrant accent.

One mute glance she gave, towards Marina; but that was for form only, and quite redundant. They'd worked this out already. They might even have rehearsed.

“Ben,” Marina began, “you know Sallah's family, that they are not lawful here?”

Yes, I did know that. A little I'd had from Sallah, what exchanges of confidence we could manage in alien tongues; more I'd picked up from gossip with staff and students at the college. Sallah's parents had come here from Morocco years ago, and long outstayed their visas. They didn't hide, they sold leatherwork from a stall right on the promenade; and they had a longstanding and easy relationship with the chief of police, I'd heard, paying a gentle bribe every month to be sure he continued to overlook their lack of official papers.

But that complaisant policeman had retired, Marina told me, his pension no doubt comfortably swollen by all those backhanders; and, “The new man,” she said, “he is not so convenient.”

“He can't want to deport them, surely?” I demanded; then, when she frowned, “Not to send them back, Marina? After so long?”

“No,” she said slowly. “But he threats this, yes? Unless...”

Threatens
, but I didn't say it. There are times to worry about a pupil's grammar, and times definitely not. “Unless what?”

Now she was awkward, she was embarrassed—for Sallah, not for herself: I read that in the glance aside, in the hand that reached for her friend's—and she didn't want to answer. And that reluctance was answer enough, I could read the truth also, I wasn't that naïve.

“
Jesus...!
”

Marina the sometimes-good Catholic girl scowled at me for the blasphemy, but nodded also. “He has seen Sallah, and he says, he says he will not take money, but...”

He would take her instead, a tribute to his new-won authority. Regularly, no doubt; monthly, perhaps, his own version of a mensal bribe; very much against her will, it went without saying. Sallah would do a great deal for her family, that I knew. I had thought before that she might even marry according to their choice and not her own, though it would be her own choice to do so. This, though—no. Or I thought not; or that was my first thought, at least. But for her parents' livelihood, for her parents'
life
—and what was it, after all? The conjunction of bodies, only an animal act, and no more than she did with me already, and sweetly, fiercely more than once a month...

The impossibility of decision, she couldn't and yet she must: this, then, was the thing too great even for her mind to encompass, what had forced her gears out of mesh.