Heaven's Edge (15 page)

Kris put his finger to his lips. I cut the engine. Silence enveloped us. Before I could stop him, Kris slipped out and padded ahead. He paused by the side of the barrier and listened with his head held slightly at an angle. Then he turned and signalled to us to wait. A moment later he disappeared into the grounds. We watched him steal up the side of the steep garden, weaving in and out of the shrubs.

‘Why does he do that? Like a machine he just goes.' Jaz shook his head. ‘Why can't he communicate a little?'

I felt anxious but Kris seemed to know what he was doing. I opened my door.

‘Wait.' Jaz hobbled into his shoes. ‘Now don't you start too. Wait for me.'

I sneaked up to the barrier. The building at the top of the hill seemed to be floating like an empyreal pagoda crested with balconies and glazed ochre tiles. The scene was a picture held in glass. Protected, but with a sense of emptiness that echoed like a loss of heart, a truncated life.

After a while Kris appeared high up on the front steps, his sleeves rolled up, waving. ‘He's calling us.' Jaz tugged at my belt.

Halfway up the rough concrete walkway Jaz paused. ‘This place
is
really deserted, isn't it?'

At the entrance to the building, two stately black doors dressed with rows of lacquered brass studs and finger plates were open. The walls on either side, decorated with ornamental pillars, were painted a regency red.

Kris, breathing heavily, ushered us in as though into his own home.

‘Is there no one here?' Jaz asked, dubiously.

Kris coughed into his hand. ‘It's safe.'

Inside there was a courtyard with a garden of ageing rose bushes in the middle and a gallery of delicate fretwork around it; a stone sculpture of a metamorphosing fish occupied the centre. Out of its lips the black streak of a defunct fountain ran.

There were stairs at each corner of the quadrangle and right opposite, a glass wall curtained from the inside.

‘What a gorgeous curtain.' Jaz prodded me. ‘Aren't you just dying to know what's behind it?'

I looked at Kris. He bowed.

The door was secured only by a simple tubular lock; Kris
had no trouble opening it. Inside we discovered a dining hall with a dozen polished hardwood tables, each with eight chairs whose spindles seemed to imitate the cosmology of an extinct priesthood. Against one wall a sideboard with glasses and a cutlery box; above these a felt-board with notices pinned to it. Jaz went up to the board and read them out aloud as though they were poems on lentil soup, tofu, and mango mousse. He did an excited flamenco stamp. ‘My God, can we stay, can we stay?'

Kris nodded. ‘Yes, for now we can all stay. There is nobody to stop us.'

The far wall, also of glass, was uncurtained. I crossed the polished parquet floor and stepped down into the lower half of the hall. The view of the land below was extraordinarily pastoral: a vale of blond, gently sloping grassland, dotted with small inky tarns of calm water. The higher ground of the hills on the other side was fringed with tufts of matted jungle. The scene was familiar, even though I had never seen it before. Somehow the pastel colour of the grass, the reflective water, the balance of sky, cloud and soft sweeping hillsides each in its own way seemed connected to a faint glimmering inside my head.

Meanwhile Jaz explored the pantry next door. I heard him open cupboards, larders, eco-fridges and cardboard boxes as if on a shopping spree. ‘Look at this stuff.' He hauled out pulse packets and grain bags with huge, bounding exclamations. ‘Here.' He passed around a packet of cereal bars. ‘Something decent to eat at last.' He crammed a couple, quickly, into his mouth and opened a can of spaghetti hoops.

Kris went to the sink and tested the taps. They worked. He washed his hands thoroughly and rinsed his forearms several times. He shook the water off in slow, wringing motions.

Although Kris seemed remarkably at ease, I was not. I shovelled in some food quickly. ‘Why is there no one here?'

Kris shrugged. ‘There is no one.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘It was locked up. I had to break in. Trust me. We can stay here.'

I still felt uneasy, but Jaz was delighted. He spooned out more canned slop. ‘Here, have some more. This will have to keep us going until I get a proper meal sorted out. Hey, we can have a real party tonight.'

‘But somebody must live here. Look at the way it has been kept.' I couldn't understand it.

‘This is Farindola,' Kris explained. ‘It was once a Chief's retreat but the military have withdrawn. No one will come here now. We can stay. We must stay, until you work out what you want to do next.'

Of course it could not have been Samandia. There were no coconut trees. In the excitement I'd forgotten Samandia was meant to be in the lower country. Much further on. Kris's Farindola must be where Eldon used to go hiking as a boy. What he had called the lunar plains.

‘But who has kept it like this?'

‘Whoever it was, they are not here any more. No one can come here except on the road we drove along. This is where it ends. I'll rig up an alarm system.'

Kris was right; we needed some time to figure out what to do. I had expected the road to take us all the way, not to come to a dead end. I quickly finished my bowl. ‘I'm going to have a look around,' I announced and wandered out. I was glad of his confidence about the safety of the place, even though its immaculate emptiness made me a little uncomfortable.

My first surprise was the room on the floor above.

As I entered I saw, on the wall, a large engraving I recognised from the frontispiece of one of Eldon's books: a portrait of a plump man in a shoulder-first pose with a flag depicting a flattened island unfurled below him. As a boy I had often studied this man's picture while Eldon recounted the adventures in the book. As I examined it once again I heard Eldon's exasperated voice. ‘This fellow from England spent twenty years on our island and wrote a whole bloody book about it; I've spent sixty years on his and haven't even written a damn letter.' His old friend Anton who was with him sniffed ungraciously. ‘That's that book that inspired Robinson Crusoe, no? Our fellows didn't know what they started when they held that bugger prisoner.'

I went over to the glass case in the centre of the room. It was filled with fishing reels and gaudy, feathered flies. In one corner there was a pocket-sized pamphlet:
Trout Fishing on Top of the World.
It had a photograph on the cover of a family gathered by the banks of a stream. I imagined Eldon as one of the party; the youngest boy: scowling at a fishing rod, already concocting some wild exploit to relate in his later years.

The light outside changed. A soft hill rain misted the windows forming small elongated drops. Lower down the glass they converged into a more crowded map of minute coalescing lakes distorting the view of the black tarns below – the trout ponds, I reckoned. The rain drifted down the hillsides. The sealed room was quiet but, watching the mist and the moisture, I felt that even in the open there would be no sound to this rain.

*    *    *

In our new abode, Kris seemed to come into his own. He identified the keys to every lock, and allocated each of us a bedroom as though he was the proprietor of a country inn.

Mine was on the corner of the second floor. After being reacquainted with the old engraving and having imagined Eldon outside as a boy, I felt more at ease. I was content to walk alone. As Uva would put it, our independence and our interdependence were locked into one embrace. An embrace, I now long for.

Cold, thin cloud entered the open airy corridors of the building in drifts, blowing a welcome dampness that clung to every surface even my clothes, my skin, my hair. Down in the inner rose garden a small bird was pecking furtively about the statue in the centre. It had a striking cerulean breast, and a head crested with busy yellow streaks. For some reason I was glad not to be able to identify it. I listened hard, leaning over the parapet, hoping to catch the notes of its song, but there was only windrush, the hush of mist turning into moisture, a beak rapping. Then a trickle of water came out of the mouth of the statue. It had to be Kris at work, I reckoned, turning yet another system on: it was as though he wanted to settle in Farindola for ever.

On the landing, at the top of the stairs, I found the door bearing the number he had given me. It opened to a large room with a bed, a desk and chair, a bookshelf and a wardrobe. Another door within led to the bathroom. I turned and was startled; it took me a while to recognise the dishevelled figure in the mirror. My face had got quite brown and was caked with dust; my hair was matted. I needed a wash. Kris had said that everything was solar-powered, even the hot water. I turned on the tap over the bathtub. The chrome pipes, peppered with age, spluttered and hissed at first but within seconds settled to a fast-flowing stream of warm, slightly yellow water. Even
the sound of it was a comfort: the gurgle of water on water amplified by a cast-iron drum. The whole room turned humid as the bath filled. I tested the temperature with my fingers and added a bit of cold. Then, stripping off each grimy garment in logical succession, I sat on the luxurious commode until steam entered every pore. Afterwards I lay full length in the hot frothy water with only my face and my knees protruding. I turned the taps off with my toes and let my feet sink to the bottom. A thin skim of thoughts swirled like rainbow-spills on a wet road. A warm current wafted up the insides of my legs, as she might slide to sheathe me.

I rubbed coconut oil down her arms and legs: a muscle leapt beneath my fingers. Her skin was sometimes as tight as a drum, as if she was all bunched up and ready to fly, and at other times it seemed as capacious as the surface of an ocean.

In that bath, that evening in Farindola, the memory of her seemed somehow to revolve within every other thought that came to me, and yet I was unable to hold on to her. Each time I tried, the sense of her, the essence of her, seemed to slip away; disappear, just as each time my fingers moved towards a patch of coloured bubbly water, it floated further out of reach. The time we had had together was like a dream, eroding, conforming as all our memories do to the shape of our immediate needs. Up in Farindola, although something of her straddled my innermost nerve, I simply could not clasp her, cherish her, as I wanted to. When I closed my eyes I saw Jaz instead, submerged in his own bath, with a wet flannel on his face and his swollen shiny glans breaking the spumy water.

*    *    *

When I came out, later, the sun streaked briefly again across the western sky. I heard Jaz chatting to Kris in the rose garden and went down to join them.

He was immaculate in a crisp maroon sarong and a narrow indigo tunic. His hair was gelled back, his freshly depilated chin and cheeks glowed in the sunset. His eyes were larger than ever; the lids freshly painted with azurlite and a frit of silver.

‘Nice costume,' I smiled, conscious that the clothes I had put on after my bath had yet to be cleaned, but wanting his pleasure at least to last.

Jaz pranced around delightedly. ‘You like it? I found these fabulous clothes in my room. Feel the sarong. The threads are so exquisite. I love it. And the tunic is divine. It fits perfectly, like it was tailor-made for me. And there was a gorgeous kit of make-up. Did you try the jojoba shaving stick?'

I chuckled and teased him about how someone must have known he was coming.

‘What? You think they know?' He ducked down and spread out his hands, his fingers wide apart and curving up at the tips. ‘You think they might be watching us?'

‘I was just joking. Don't worry.'

‘But they might be out there. My God, maybe it's a trap.'

‘I don't think so,' Kris mumbled behind him.

‘But you don't know.' Jaz kept his shoulders pulled in, compressed. ‘I like this place, you know. I really like it here. I don't want any bang-bangs.'

The sun disappeared. Swiftly, in the afterglow, shadows seemed to grow. Jaz grabbed my hand. ‘Why is it so dark?' He called out to Kris. ‘Can't you do something? What's happened to the lights? I thought you'd
fixed them?' But even as he spoke the flowlux began to glow along the corridors. They were slow to brighten, but the faint rims of light were enough to pacify Jaz. Even the rose beds had lights peeping through. Kris led us up the stairs. From the balcony we could see the walkway light up, and another string of pearly lights marking out the edge of the garden. Jaz clapped his hands happily. ‘A magician, darling. I told you. A real magician, this man. Look at it: a lovely beacon, don't you think, for dear Uva?'

Kris stiffened, his face set hard as it did whenever Uva was mentioned.

‘You don't think it will attract the wrong people, do you?' Jaz added, after a slight hesitation.

‘We won't be disturbed,' Kris assured him gruffly and turned away.

Jaz took my arm, relieved. ‘In that case, I think it's time for me to make us our first dinner. You boys can open the gin. There's a
huge
bottle in the lounge.'

I prised myself away. I wasn't ready. ‘You go ahead. I'll be along in a while.' Although Kris seemed to have allayed Jaz's fears, in the dark I felt my own disquiet, for no apparent reason, return.

I decided to explore the inner lip of the garden; to follow the walkway around the building before going to the dining room. Along the way I noted evidence of a devout gardener: freshly painted trellises, young cuttings recently planted, protected old trees.

Farindola seemed to have been created with real concern: the natural viewpoints, the curvature of the land, all enhanced rather than diminished, and everywhere a desire
to accept the past expressed in terms of circles and spirals, care and conservation.

Beyond the gingko tree lower down, I reached a clump of rhododendrons: sprays of purple buds lifted upwards as if in perpetual offering to the gods of the mountains. One of Kris's lamps, threaded through the bushes, blinked in distress. A loose connection, I guessed. This, I told myself, might be something I for once could fix. A nice turn of practical success – a bit of handiwork – to relate to the others. I located the cable and followed it into the thicket. The bushes, disturbed, gave off a rich, nauseous smell: night breath, our life blood, earth's own profanity exhumed. I tugged the cable and the branches juddered. I pulled aside a clutch of leaves to free it. I thought I knew what to do; how to use my instincts, shake, fiddle, fix. Strip a lead, splice a tape, that had been my forte. I broke a stem to make an opening I could crawl through, and got down on my hands and knees. Then, in the flickering light, I saw a claw. At first I assumed a clump of twisted twigs had tricked me, but then I realised it was a hand. For several seconds I couldn't even breathe. The bony hand with its gnarled fingers, its dry crinkled skin, looked petrified. Tentatively I moved another clump of leaves and exposed the rest of the body: that of a hunched woman with a knot of hair steeped in blood. The blood had just about congealed along the slit cut into her neck. My hand must have shifted the cable into position; the bulb next to me buzzed, as if about to short, but stayed on. I could see black globules stuck to the pasty flesh. The seam of her cardigan was thick with coagulated bits snagged by the coarse brown stitches. The earth reeked as I knelt before her. I tried to haul the body out but I couldn't shift her limbs to get a proper grip even though the rest of her body had not yet completely stiffened. The arms were cold; iced inside.
Her head was at an odd angle. Something snapped, muffled by the dead flesh. My stomach turned. Sick surged up the back of my mouth. I had to pull up my shirt over my mouth and nose to stop from vomiting. It was worse than seeing the red puddle swell on Kris's workshop floor. This corpse was in my arms. I forced myself to look at her face. Her ruined mouth gaped open revealing a few misshapen, badly stained teeth; her eyes were squeezed dry by her collapsed wrinkles. My grandmother Cleo was probably older when she died, but in death she had lost all the markings of a close-held life. In her coffin she had become younger than I had ever known her, her skin stretched and smoothened beyond recognition by the undertakers. But here death had robbed this old woman of something more in its violence. I looked up: the whole place was much darker than before. Further along the walkway several of the lamps had gone out.