Ivory

IVORY

Steve Merrifield

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Steve
Merrifield

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for Granddad

my first reader

IVORY

Steve Merrifield

Awakening

Prologue

Phillip Mayhew surveyed London’s buildings as they stretched
out from beneath the crane cab into the grey haze of smog on the
horizon. The site was at the heart of Camden where three high-rise
blocks of flats had been demolished. The neglected and dated
buildings had been cleared to make way for a smaller affordable
housing development. He thought it a shame they would be low-rise
and lose the arresting view that North London had to offer over the
basin of the city and its landmarks; the skinny finger of the post
office tower, the glittering glass gherkin and the group of
skyscrapers around the obelisk of the Canada One building at Canary
Wharf.

The crane’s cab creaked in protest against a gust of wind
that leaned heavily against it. The sway became a lurch as the
wind’s strength built and it was several minutes before he felt the
crane shift back into its centre as the current of air weakened.
The floating-like motion didn’t concern him since he had spent
fifteen years working with cranes in his time in the building
trade. As a labouring lad if there had been a crane on-site he
would ask to go up it and if a foreman actually refused him he
would sneak up anyway. That kind of mischief had got him suspended
from sites for a few days, but he had taken his punishment of lost
earnings like a man, and would then commit the same crime again if
he had wanted to.

The days of being a labourer were far behind him now, but he
still couldn’t shake his love of being in the cab of a crane. As an
architect he had even less reason to be up there than his crane
stowaway days, but it was well known by those around him in his
office that whenever he visited a site where one of his company’s
designs were being built, he had the quirk of giving a foreman a
laugh or a coronary by asking to go up a crane. No one had any
reason to suspect that today his motive for his visit was
different.

Although his body lacked the energy of his youth and
the climb had exhausted him, the experience had lost none of its
appeal. It was a combination of things that drew him to the crane
cabs, the view obviously – it didn’t matter what area the site was
in, the height always made for an awe inspiring panorama. The
constant listing drift of the crane was how he imagined it would be
as a bird suspended in a thermal updraft. There was also the sense
of power through being in control of a giant arm that would reach
down and lift heavy things from the ground and move them
effortlessly around the site, like Zeus in the
Clash of the Titans
film moving people around
like pawns. He laughed as he remembered fantasies he had as a lad
of plucking miserable foremen up from the ground and depositing
them high up on builds on exposed girders.

However, what had drawn him to the crane today was the
solitude the cab gave him and the much needed sense of escaping the
mess that he had made of his life. At that moment in that place –
his cherished place – he experienced a comfort and a peace that he
imagined faith would give to those that had it. He reached into the
inside pocket of his jacket and produced a dog-eared photograph of
his wife Brenda and their three boys. He rubbed the corners, trying
to smooth it out, but the creases were too deep. He couldn’t fix
it. Like the family in the picture – he couldn’t fix what he had
done.

The love he felt for the family in his hands sharpened his
guilt into wicked barbs in his chest. He and his wife had planned
their life well. In the early years they hadn’t allowed their love
for each other to distract them from their university courses, and
they had made it through four years of living in different parts of
the country while they studied. They then threw themselves into
their respective jobs and getting themselves noticed by their
employers. Once the money had been good enough they got married and
bought a house and allowed themselves the luxury of a family, with
the knowledge that they could give their children the good start in
life they had both lacked themselves.

Over the thirty-five years they had known each other, Brenda
had gained some weight to her face and her skin had lined in the
delicate areas around her eyes and mouth, but she was still
attractive and was all he had needed to fulfil his fantasies. He
had the love of his wife, and his fantastic boys and he was a
success in his job. That was supposed to be enough.

It had been enough.
Until he
had seen the girl.

He had never considered straying before – it was against his
moral code. Yet he had. She was unusual in appearance but strangely
attractive. Considering the probable thirty year age gap she would
never have looked at him twice if she hadn’t been a prostitute.
Going to a prostitute was something else that he would never have
considered, yet he had been to her many times now.

He had felt shame every time. It was an awful feeling. A
feeling that he had wanted to cut out of him if he could, along
with his sin, but his shame hadn’t been potent enough to stop him
paying for her again and again. The cancer of guilt had grown with
every visit. He had no idea of the going rate for such services,
but knew she was expensive. Even if she had cost less he had seen
her every other day for months on end and he would still be facing
the same financial crisis.

He had tried to stop himself, but she was beautiful. Even
after the first month had destroyed his personal savings, he hadn’t
been able to stop himself squandering the family savings, money
that had been reserved for his boy’s education, their deposits on
property and cars, and the nest egg for Brenda and himself in
retirement. All gone on sex with a prostitute. Brenda was due an
annual statement any time and his betrayal would be
uncovered.

He stifled a sob. He hated himself. Yet that wasn’t enough to
stop him meeting the girl. He would make up for it. He would
replace all the blood money he had wasted and his family would
never know what he had used the savings for. He might even retain
the love and respect of his wife and boys. He looked at the
cityscape of north London. It was a powerful panorama that imbued
him with inner strength. He felt more than the weak man he had
become. He felt free. Like a bird. Like a Giant. Like a God. Like
the young man that had craved this view throughout his dreams and
achievement of love, family and success.

Clutching the photograph of his family he stepped out of the
cab and plummeted. The air rushed over his body, pulling at his
clothes like a thousand snatching hands. After this industrial
accident the insurance pay-out would cover all his debts. He did it
for Brenda, the girl who had lived next door to him as a child. The
girl he had courted, the woman he had married. Did it for the
babies he had cradled, the young men he had raised. He did it for
his family. He crammed his mind with their faces and scenes from
their life together like his own imagined heaven. They would be the
last thing in his mind as he died. It would secure his link to them
in the afterlife. Christmases, births, birthdays, picnics, day
trips.

A face filled his mind. It was a pale phantom of a face with
blackness for eyes. The girl. The thoughts of his family scattered.
He slammed against the concrete below and burst open. The last
thing in his mind and heart was not his family, but his
guilt.

Part
One

“
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible.

God and Devil are
fighting there,

and the battlefield is
the heart of man.”

Fedor Dostoevsky

Chapter One

Dark bloated
clouds swathed the night sky in a low crawling ceiling,
haemorrhaging their substance over London, turning the dark grey
streets into stretches of black glassy marble infused and splashed
with the reflected lights and neon signs. Martin Roberts’ Volvo
estate hit a puddle with the impact of a hydroplane touching down,
sending fans of silvery water into the air like wings. The lights
of the streets were distorted by the vertical veins of rain and the
watery pearls that twitched across the glass away from the
direction of the car.

The outside
world was a blur in Martin’s peripheral senses, swept away by the
trudging march of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A that strained the
speakers of his music system, blocking out the sound of rain
rattling onto the roof and the hiss of the tires thrashing the
puddles. The music’s steady climb to its crescendo imitated the
rage that was building from the red lights and busy junctions that
seemed to conspire against Martin’s need to get home and end his
evening. The track came to its quiet close but instead of another
pounding classic taking its place it was replaced by bouncy notes
and saccharine voices – the Tweenies. One of the boys CD’s had been
left in the CD changer. Ditched by the powerful classic tracks his
mood suddenly had nowhere to go, and he had been so enjoying his
rage. Feeling passion instead of the constant mire of his
underlying melancholy and frustration was a refreshing change.

There was a clear stretch on the Charing Cross road,
the Tweenies would have to stay for the moment, he gripped the
wheel and aimed his car at the night-time streets, and the Tweenies
sang as he floored the accelerator and charged to gain some ground
on his trek across the city. He had been forced to take an indirect
route home due to the major water pipe and sewer restoration and
replacement project taking place at various points across the city.
The road works had forced drivers into unfamiliar territory,
causing them to hesitate and change their minds and directions,
snarling the roads with traffic even at this late hour. He slowed
as he approached a Queue of glaring red eyed brake lights. He had
gained a couple of hundred metres. Hardly worth breaking the speed
limit.
Guilt soured his gut before being diluted
within his stagnant reservoir of other unpleasant feelings.
The journey and the nightmare driving conditions were the
crown on a shitty day.

Martin stabbed a finger at the CD player and switched to the
next classical CD and his red mood soared with Wagner’s Valkyries.
The point when the evening had become a write-off with his hopes
strangled and his pride smothered, had been when the little wanker
Richard Hadleigh won the award for best piece at the University
Departmental Achievement Ceremony. The ‘UDAC’s’ as they were called
on the campus, were the universities equivalent of the Oscar’s. The
judges had said that Hadleigh’s work ‘Conveyed the artists struggle
with repressed emotions and hidden desires’. It was a piece that
had symbolised his ‘coming out’ in his second year at
university.

Everyone
knew Hadleigh was a
raving woofter. It wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t even something many
people batted an eyelid at these days. It was almost fashionable.
The amount of lads that he had seen hanging from Hadleigh or locked
to his face over the last three years didn’t seem much of a
‘struggle’.

The car’s burst of speed was halted as he reached Oxford
Street and even though the lights were in his favour, he was forced
to inch himself across the streets traffic. This award meant that
Hadleigh had won the Universities art prize two years running,
which was a rare event that had only been achieved by Martin
himself. Martin’s second win had been in Hadleigh’s first year at
the university, after which they had met and forged a relationship
of mutual admiration; Martin for Hadleigh’s developing talent and
passion and Hadleigh for Martin’s generous teaching of his own
honed skills. Their needs had been mutually met within the role of
student and teacher. It had come just when Martin had first sensed
his creativity being stifled from a long tenure as lecturer, and
Hadleigh’s passion had been infectious. Their shared bond through
canvas acrylics and oil had been broken when Hadleigh defected to
sculpture. A sudden and mysterious coup that had left Martin
without a protégé.