Little Bits of Baby (34 page)

‘On millions of family screens across the country,' she told herself. ‘Candida Thackeray comes back from the dead. Bless you, Robin. Bless you.'

When Jake climbed into the ambulance beside her for the last photo-call before tomorrow morning, he would find a peaceful smile on her perfect, dusty lips.

Forty-Three

Luck of some sort enabled Robin to catch the last boat that was sailing to Whelm that evening. It was the fisherman who brought the post across in the mornings, the one who had ferried him away from Whelm.

‘I've got their new boiler,' he said. ‘Didn't get here till half an hour ago. If you help me carry it up there, I'll take you over for nothing.'

‘Done,' said Robin.

‘Come back, have you?' the fisherman asked, ‘Seen the error of your ways?'

Robin said nothing, so the fisherman left him alone, started the engine and sent them chugging through the darkness.

The boiler was about the size of a family fridge and just as heavy. The rain had turned the island paths to slippery mud and the fisherman was old and tired. They had to stop every twenty shuffles to set the boiler down and let him find his breath. A grizzle-haired monk Robin didn't know, a visitor perhaps, opened the gate to them. Unsmiling, he paid the fisherman and sent him away then hoisted his half of the boiler with unexpected strength and they carried it through to the kitchen. The place was silent and Robin realised that compline was over and all the rest were in bed.

‘So you've come back,' the monk said.

‘Yes. Do you know who I am?'

‘I've heard enough idle talk to guess.'

‘I need to talk to Jonathan.'

‘You can't. The Abbot's asleep, they're all asleep. Anyway, he's sick.'

‘It's important.'

‘It'll have to wait. Have you eaten?'

‘Yes,' Robin said. He hadn't but frustration at having arrived so late left him no appetite for anything but sleep. He was wet and shivering.

‘Your old room's still empty. You'll find sheets in the linen room.' The monk sat at the kitchen table, opened a large, foreign-looking book and in seconds was absorbed in it.

Robin found his way to his old room without turning on a single light. The linen room was just across the corridor. The hot water pipes that ran through it were cold as the grave. He wondered how long they had been without a boiler. He took a couple of blankets and a bare pillow, flung himself with them onto his damp mattress and lost himself in blank exhaustion.

‘Robin, wake up.'

His shoulder was being rubbed through the blanket. He was one acute ache.

‘Robin!'

More rubbing. The ache grew worse as the smell of the damp mattress and the abrasive rumple of slept-in clothes reminded him that he was far from Faber's. He clutched the blankets closer for warmth and sat up. It was Luke. He was smiling.

‘I was coming out of the linen store and I saw you lying here,' he said. ‘What a surprise!'

‘I've come back, Luke,' said Robin.

‘I gathered that. Why?'

‘I want to join. I want to be a novice.'

‘I can't believe that for a moment.'

‘Nor can I, really. But it's what I want. I can't be anywhere else. Not now. Luke!' Robin saw Luke's new habit. ‘You've gone all the way. They've sworn you in.'

‘Last week,' Luke said, proudly. ‘I thought it was time I took the plunge. It was partly Jonathan falling sick, too. I've been sitting in his room a lot, reading to him and talking with him. It helped me make up my mind.'

He was so happy, sitting on Robin's bed. He looked so complete, healthy. Smug?

‘Damn you,' Robin said. ‘Damn you all.'

‘Don't say that.'

‘Help me, then.'

‘I'll try. What's happened?'

‘What time is it?'

‘I'm not sure. About six, I think. Maybe later. It'll be light properly soon.'

Robin sat up completely and swung his legs round so that he was sitting with his back against the wall. He shivered at the touch of cold paintwork on his neck and tugged the blankets around him like a shawl.

‘I've killed someone,' he said.

‘Who?' Luke stopped looking smug.

‘That's irrelevant. But I've gone and killed them. I pushed them under a train. Or they fell because I was trying to stop them. I'm not sure now.' Luke hugged him. Robin pushed him off. ‘It was Candida.'

‘Your friend who'd just had the baby?'

‘Yes,' Robin snapped, mimicking him. ‘My friend who'd just had a bloody baby. I was having an attack and she misunderstood and ran after me. I think she thought I was going to kill myself or something daft. She grabbed me and I pushed her away or she pushed me. I don't know. And then she sort of slipped down through my arms and went under the train.'

‘Are you sure she was killed?'

‘Of course she was killed. She went under a train, you silly prick.'

‘That's terrible.'

‘Anyway. I wasn't going to hang around to find out. I came straight here.'

‘I'm glad you did.'

Luke's quietness and sympathy enraged Robin, and reminded him why he had come here. He grabbed him by the silly neck and began to throttle him.

‘Damn you,' Robin said. ‘Damn you and damn Jonathan and damn you all with your apples and beeswax and damn those fat, sick, peculiar women on the island next door. You should never have let me go. It's all your fault. You should never have let me go. You should have kept me here. Locked me up. Forced me to be a monk. I would have been if you'd forced me. I'd have sworn to anything. I didn't want to leave. I wasn't ready. But you were all so bloody sympathetic and undemanding and you went and let me go and now she's gone and fallen under a train.'

He released Luke's neck, throwing him back against the wall. Luke's cowl flopped upwards as he went so he didn't crack his skull, but Robin could see that the violence had woken him up. Luke wasn't smiling now and he was frightened too. Robin could tell because he didn't even rub his neck, which must have been hurting him.

‘Listen,' Luke said.

‘No,' Robin went on. ‘You always made me listen. You all pretended to listen to what I was saying and none of you ever lectured me or preached at me but you did it around me, over my head, behind my back. You thought that that way it wouldn't count and that you wouldn't be to blame if anything went wrong. All those phoney ideas about love and sacrifice and stillness and sympathy and contemplation. It's too passive to be anything but phoney. It may make sense here but out there it's just sex, money, achievement and influence. Nothing else counts. Nothing else works. Love and sacrifice don't work out there. Love is for babies and children. Love for adults is something you're expected to grow out of and be cynical about. Things won't last here, either. Look at you,' he shouted, angry because he wasn't talking logically and Luke always had quiet logic at his command. ‘Your abbot falls sick, the boiler breaks down and the whole place tumbles down around you. You'll turn into sharks too, overnight.'

‘What?'

‘Sharks. It's a turn of phrase.' Robin stood and stumbled, sleep-lame, to the window. A thin dawn had broken. The post-boat was arriving. ‘Candida should have pushed me,' he said quietly.

‘Look,' Luke insisted. Robin turned and saw that Luke had stood. He was furious, cheeks white, green eyes black. Robin had never seen him like that before. Perhaps it was something to do with becoming a monk. The new black cassock dignified him. Robin was frightened and his exhaustion swept back. If Luke hit him he would crumple. Then, perhaps, he would leave him alone. ‘Look,' Luke repeated. ‘That's an evil thing to say. Candida loved you. She was trying to show you that.'

(‘I love you,' she had hissed. Her face was all wrong with fear but the words remained.)

Robin thought he felt the first cold touches of an attack, or was this feeling fear?

‘Your mother and father loved you and still do. Candida's husband. The weak man with the fancy job …'

‘Jake.'

‘Yes. Jake. Jake loved you, in his way. He found it impossible and tried to ignore it but he loved you. Jonathan here loves you, even though he's probably dying. If I ran up there now and told him you were here he would smile. That's love. That artist you were introduced to at the baptism.'

‘Faber Washington.'

‘Yes. Him. He would love you. I could tell. That's why I felt safe leaving you there as I did. All this love makes your life worthwhile. Not just for your pleasure, though that will come, but because a life lived wholly is an occasion for love.'

‘Occasion for love. Where did you steal that quaint …'

‘Shut up!' Luke spat. ‘It's an occasion for love. And for what it's worth, I love you too.'

Robin remembered the wind in apple trees, the rustle of paper, the scent of new fruit.

‘You don't love me,' he jeered, ‘You just fancy my unecclesiastical body.'

Now Luke did punch him. In the stomach. Winded, Robin doubled up and tottered about gasping like a stranded fish. Luke led him to the bed and let him collapse on the edge of it. There were sounds of other men rising. Taps were turned on, lavatories flushed. Doors shut and opened. Mumbled early morning greetings. Luke shut the door and came to stand by Robin.

‘Sorry,' he said.

‘That's OK.'

‘You made me promise to explain everything once,' he said. ‘Remember?' Robin nodded, watching his sockless, sandalled feet beneath his habit. He never used to punish himself like that. ‘And I said that if you'd wait, I'd show you. Well, you're too stupid to be shown, or too obstinate, or too bound up in your own useless attractions and dislikes. Robin, I came here for exactly the same reason as you – innocence and a tendency to love too much without trying to understand. Very dull really. A very common complaint. I met her at technical college. She was training to be an engineer like me. She wasn't beautiful or anything, but she was blonde and witty – and not many people were, there, I can tell you – and she gave me time. And time and time. I worshipped her. We went to the cinema. We drove miles to look at bridges. We sat together in lectures about the history of rivetting. And I never laid a finger on her so, after a month or so and quite understandably, she went off with the first bloke who did, who just happened to be my best friend.

‘So, no, Robin. It's a very nice body, but I don't fancy it.'

They stayed there for about three minutes, Robin sitting, Luke standing and, Robin supposed, staring down at him waiting for an answer. He didn't give him one. Robin found himself stupid, cross and wordless.

Then a commotion of some sort started at the far end of the corridor. A man was protesting and others were trying to shout him down. It came nearer. Luke sighed impatiently and tugged open the door.

‘Where is he? I have to speak to him!'

‘In here,' Luke said. ‘Go on, it's all right. You can let him through.'

Robin looked up to see what was going on. Luke moved back into the corridor gesturing towards him with his arm. Faber ran into the doorway and stood there staring at him wildly. He was clutching a tabloid.

‘Look,' he said, but Robin was looking at his face. ‘No,' Faber said crossly, ‘Look here. Look.' He held the paper up and banged its front page with the back of one hand.

‘CANDIDA LIVES!!' it said.

Forty-Four

The farce with the train and the ‘TV personality' had been explained and laughed over then Luke had steered the monks away to their morning business and Faber found himself alone with Robin. Robin reached towards him for a kiss but Faber pushed him away.

‘How could you?' Faber asked. ‘
Why
did you just run off like that? You didn't think that Candida and I ..?'

‘Of course not. Not really. But I'd just hit her son and …'

Faber broke in. ‘She came to talk about Iras's novel. She didn't know about Marcus and then Marcus's secretary suddenly came in with a letter from the solicitors and, well, I dissolved on her. Poor Candida. Oh yes.' Faber sighed. ‘All of a sudden we're rich. Very, very. Marcus left us everything – me and Iras, that is.' He drifted to stare out of the window. He drummed his fingers on the cold radiator. ‘Why did you come here? If something was wrong you could have stayed and told me. Oh, but of course, I forgot: you'd killed Candida. Sorry. I'm burbling. I'm very, very tired. And I'm cold. Why isn't the radiator on? Does that make it more holy? I spent the night on a bench in the bloody harbour waiting for a boat. Sorry. Well, say
something
!'

Robin had been sitting on the bed all this while. Now he stood and held out an arm towards the open door.

‘There's something you should see,' he said.

They walked in silence along a blank white corridor down a broad spiral staircase and out into a courtyard. Faber had been in such a rush when he arrived that he had barely looked at the strange building around him. Whelm resembled a nineteenth-century monomaniac's idea of a French château. The pointed roofs and pinnacled turrets were in poor repair. The cream paintwork was streaked with green. The fine blue-grey slates had been replaced here and there with cheap green alternatives. The place stirred uneasy memories of Faber's strange schooldays. Robin led him out of the courtyard to a large outbuilding. A barn, perhaps, or a stable.

‘In here,' he said, opening a door.

It was as large as a barn, with high beams and great, barred doors but instead of hay bales there were apples and pears everywhere on trays in old wooden shelves that rose at least fifteen feet high. There were long ladders fixed to rails which ran along the lines of shelving.

‘Apples,' said Robin, sliding one of the ladders towards him. He jumped onto it and slid away from Faber. The air was heavy with apple. ‘They call it the Fruit Library because of these things,' he said. ‘Have one.' He tossed Faber an apple. The tissue paper slid away in Faber's grasp. The fruit's skin shone red-green in the dim light from the half-open door.