Mercy Seat (15 page)

I think that maybe I would have lain there long past two, or even three, or four, letting memories and half-dreams wash over me, and everything then would have been different – all the years between then and now – but suddenly, maybe at some small movement I made, or some change in my breathing, Jenny was awake and stretching her straight, warm body. She turned her open face up to mine, and I knew then I'd have to go.

My head didn't clear much until I opened the front door onto the prom and a slap of cold air hit me fresh off the sea. I breathed deep and took the steps two at a time. Suddenly all my anxiety and confusion seemed to be working inside me like a fuel – as I walked I could feel the soles of my trainers pushing strong and supple against the pavement as if their rubber was muscle, and part of me. My stomach still felt loaded with a sense of premonition, but now instead of pinning me the weight of it was bowling me forward.

Anzani was serving behind the counter when I got to the shop. He was attending to an old man who seemed to be quizzing him about something. When he saw me
waiting he called over to a girl labelling tins on the shelves and said, this gentleman wants to know about our pies. Show him what we have, okay? Excuse me, he said to the old guy.

The girl started pointing out the pies and describing each filling. She spoke to the pensioner in a slow, singsong voice which he seemed to like. He grinned toothily at her.

Hey Luke, come out the back, eh? He led me through the shop and out into a damp concrete yard. The van was parked in front of a row of steel refuse bins. Anzani opened the van door, made way for me to climb in, and pointed out the indicator and switches. She's all loaded up, he said. The delivery list is on the dashboard there, ok?

I nodded and took the keys off him.

Ok, he said. First place is the Maltsters Arms. You know it, eh?

Opposite the station?

Good. Ok. Then a few places out of town. Nothing too far away though. He seemed a bit nervous now, regretting letting me loose in his van, maybe. And when you finish, leave it at the warehouse and keep the keys for tomorrow. He took one last look inside the cab. Ok, he said again. He slammed the door and watched me draw the seat belt across my chest and buckle it before unbolting and swinging open the whitewashed wooden gates.

I started the engine and eased out past Anzani, conscious of him studying me through the cab window. The yard gave onto a narrow back street I didn't recognise. It was empty so I turned right and started figuring out the best way to get around the one-way system to the library.

Christine was waiting on the steps. She smiled thinly
and didn't say anything other than a quick hello as she clambered up into the passenger seat and heaved the door shut behind her.

Sorry – I'm a bit late, I said, wanting to start some kind of conversation.

Don't worry. I didn't notice.

I turned the van, with some difficulty, holding up a line of waiting drivers, and headed back towards the town centre. Are you sure you want to do this? I asked. I haven't driven for years. I can hardly remember where the clutch is.

Of course I want to. It's fine. I feel safe with you.

I looked at her, surprised, almost trundling through a junction. I kicked down at the brake and we both pitched forward. Sorry. Put your belt on, I said.

So. Where are we going? She looked straight ahead as she spoke. It made me even more nervous than I already was. I could feel my palms slipping on the smooth plastic of the wheel.

A pub near the station.

Where then?

Don't know. Have a look for me. I reached for the clipboard holding the delivery list and handed it to her, hoping she wouldn't notice the rash of sweat my hand had left on the wheel.

Ok, she said, and took it from me, brushing her fingers briefly against mine. I've bought a map, she added, and she was looking at me at last now and smiling.

A map?

Of the whole area. In case we go out of town to somewhere you don't know the way to. She studied the schedule. We've only got four places after this, she said,
disappointed.

Where are they?

Three more in town, I think, then one in some place I can't make out. She stared closer at the clipboard. His handwriting's awful, she said. Anyway, it's a Welsh name starting with a ‘P' or a ‘D'. I can't tell.

I'll check when we get to the pub.

Then I'll look it up on my new map.

I wasn't sure if she meant it to sound comical. I couldn't decide if this new, child-like mood was a real attempt at intimacy or just some extended sardonic joke. When I glanced across to check her expression she kept her head bowed, eyes fixed on the clipboard, her fingers toying with the cheap yellow biro someone had attached to it with Sellotape and string.

The deliveries around town were straightforward enough – boxes of snacks, crates of bottled beers and a few trays of shrink-wrapped pies. The out of town address turned out to be in a village called Penderyn, though, which was ten miles inland and on a route I'd never taken before. Christine seemed genuinely pleased to have to use her map and she read out each direction in a precise, military kind of way hundreds of yards before I actually reached any of the junctions.

The village was small – just a single terraced street with bigger, manse-like houses separated off – and the hotel we needed was impossible to miss. I pulled up at the kerb outside the main door, which was shut. There was a bell in the shallow porch, but ringing it didn't do any good. After a couple of minutes I looked back at Christine and shrugged.

Tap the windows, she called.

The glass was frosted except where the lettering for the hotel's name, The Red Dragon, had been stencilled and left clear. I looked through the lettering but it was gloomy inside and the glass was dirty. I tapped a few times anyway but wasn't surprised when nobody came. The day had been overcast, but now a late afternoon burst of sun was warming the back of my neck. I looked up and down the street but apart from a young mother hauling two kids towards me there was nothing stirring. I'll go round the back, I told Christine, and she nodded, one hand raised up now to shield her eyes from the new glare.

There was an alleyway running along the side of the hotel and off it a wider lane with back entrances to all the buildings on the main street. The wooden door to the hotel's back yard was ajar so I pushed it and walked in. The few wooden tables and a set of children's swings were completely deserted. A muddy Land Rover occupied one of the spaces in the car park and a rusty bicycle stood propped against one of the posts holding up an empty washing line. Nothing stirred and I was considering giving up and leaving the delivery piled high on the pavement when a fire escape door clattered and scraped open on the first floor. A short fat woman in a white apron appeared on the metal balcony. Yes? she snapped.

I've got a delivery round the front, I called up.

Yes – deliveries round the front!

I shrugged up at her. I knocked, I said, but I couldn't get an answer.

Well. You will now. She waved me back out of the yard, disappeared inside and dragged the fire door shut behind her. The sound of its steel bar locking into place cracked like a gunshot and somewhere along the lane a dog started
to bark.

By the time I got back round to the front door it was open, though there was still no one around. I shifted the boxes and crates inside, stacking them on the balding hall carpet. Hello! That's the delivery in! I called when I'd finished, but got no answer. I waited a few seconds, then wandered back outside and opened the van door. Did you see where she went? I asked Christine. I need her to sign for it.

She shook her head, unclipped her seat belt and got out of the cab to join me on the pavement. She hooked her thumbs into the back pockets of her jeans and flexed her upper body, arching back from the waist.

We can't go until someone signs the bloody invoice, I said.

She tilted her head, amused, and squinted at me. Let's go inside.

There was a broad staircase just a little way along the hall. Christine sauntered halfway up its stairs, then turned and grinned at me. She carried on out of sight, turning onto a landing running over my head. Within a few moments a door opened and closed somewhere on the floor she was on, but not in the direction she'd gone. Christine, I called as low as I could, and started after her up the stairs.

There was a flurry of light footsteps and suddenly Christine was back on the stairs and skipping past me back to the van. The fat woman arrived on the landing in time to see the back of Christine's head, maybe, but nothing else. You only need to ring the bell, she scolded. That's all you need to do, you know. I've got a thousand and one things to see to. I can't be everywhere. A man's
voice – low and bad-tempered – rolled along the upstairs corridor from somewhere behind her. She stumped down the stairs, snatched the clipboard off me and signed without even glancing at the delivery. There, she said. Now off these stairs.

Sorry, I said, and retreated to the door.

There, she said again. The bell, there. See?

Look, said Christine, when I got back into the cab and started the engine. She drew a big glass ashtray out from under her jacket. It had the sign of the hotel etched in red on its base.

Where the hell did you get that?

One of the bedrooms. The door was open.

Jesus, I said. Why?

She shrugged. It must have been a nice place once, if they had their own ashtrays. Don't you think?

I don't believe it, I said. What the hell were you thinking?

It's just an ashtray, she said, and studied it more carefully. I'm sure they had lots of them. It's clean, she added, as if that was what might be bothering me.

All the way back to town Christine hummed quietly to herself; scraps of classical music, then what sounded like hymns and choruses. The sun stayed bright and by the time we hit the rush-hour traffic my forehead was throbbing.

Where are we going? she asked when I turned off from the main route into the centre.

They were the first words she'd spoken to me since showing me the ashtray and I could feel my blood swarming up. I took a deep breath to control my voice. Anzani wanted the van left at the warehouse.

It'll be nice to see where you work, she said, as casually as if we'd been chatting happily for miles. She was looking away again, humming another hymn. It sounded familiar though I couldn't place it and thought it might be a Christmas carol, or something I used to hear in Sunday School when I was a kid. I turned back to the road and soon was easing the van into the sharp corner at the bottom of the warehouse hill. It's up this road, I told her, just for something to say.

She broke off her tune. I've walked this way, she said. I remember how steep this hill was, and going down the other side to the castle and the seafront. She turned to face me. Maybe you were in the warehouse when I walked past.

I nodded, the hairs on the back of my neck bristling like pins. Here we are, I said, pulling the van over onto the concrete apron fronting the warehouse doors. An awkward silence fell over us once I'd killed the engine. For a while we both just sat still, waiting, though for what I didn't know.

Take me inside the warehouse, she said at last, and those must have been the words I was waiting for somewhere in my mind because I wasn't surprised and the answer came straight to my lips.

I can't, I lied. I've only got the keys for the van, not the door. Sorry. I unclipped my seat belt, suddenly embarrassed at having apologised.

It doesn't matter, she said.

While I locked the van, Christine wandered up to the side door of the warehouse. She squatted and lifted the letterbox to peer through.

There's nothing to see, I told her.

She straightened up and shrugged. Too dark to tell, anyway.

I looked up and down the road. Which way do you want to walk home?

Up the hill.

The sun was weaker now and a cool, marine atmosphere had begun to settle in the early evening shadows. A strip of bright sunshine still lit the opposite side of the road but Christine seemed content to stay in the shade. She set off quickly and in a few minutes we were clear of the buildings and amongst steep slopes of broom and gorse. What's up there? she asked, pausing for breath.

The golf course.

Do you get a good view up on top? She swept her hair back. Do you get a view of the castle and the sea? Her face was starting to pink with warmth.

I told her yes, but didn't start climbing again. I looked up at the gorse bushes and the faint, sandy ways between them and waited again like I'd waited in the van.

Let's climb up – I'd like to see. She was already walking so I followed her, watching her haunches work under the denim.

About halfway up the hill she took one of the side-trails, easing through overhanging gorse and broom, and as if by instinct brought us to the patch of open grass where I'd often sat to be alone and eat olives and drink a beer between the end of a shift and the slow walk home. I noticed an empty olive jar, almost hidden in the tangle of gorse roots where I'd left it months before.

What's that? Christine said. She'd stopped and was waiting for me.

Nothing, I said. I used to come up here for a break
sometimes, that's all. I must have left an empty jar behind one day. I pointed it out with the toe of my shoe.

She stooped down to see. There's a beer bottle, too, she said to me over her shoulder. She sounded pleased, and bent to pick it up. There's a dead slug in it, she reported.

They like beer.

It's just a little one. She flipped the bottle and its passenger deeper into the gorse bush.

I looked back down over the tops of the bushes, towards the warehouse. The zinc roof and the flat top of the tyre-fitters were shining like brass in the reddish, angled light.

It's peaceful here.

I turned and saw she'd sat down now, knees drawn up to her chest. I thought about the last time I'd wandered up this way, watching black, long-legged flies reeling from blossom to blossom. There were no flies now, just a heavy-looking bee drowsing into the sharp heart of the bushes. The memory seemed strange – vivid but remote – like something I'd dreamed I'd once done. I sat down next to her, and I didn't know if what I felt was a kind of excitement or despair. My arms felt numb and useless, trembling, too heavy to support, and I folded them over my raised knees.