Mercy Seat (16 page)

I had to go to counselling, you know, she said. I was in a bad way after the funeral, and things happened, and the doctors at the hospital made me speak to people. Shrinks, you know?

What kinds of things?

She shook her head. They were all so stupid. It was like living with my mother and Jenny again. They couldn't tell me why I should feel one thing for somebody and not another thing. You can only be one thing to somebody you
love, they said, but they couldn't tell me why I couldn't be more than one thing, if I wanted to be. If it was my choice. It was too late by then, but they still couldn't tell me. Just legal things, and second hand psychology. Babble babble babble. They were like the kids I teach: full of silly rules they don't even understand. So I just told them what they wanted to hear, and they said I was getting better. I don't have to talk to them anymore.

Your father? I said.

You don't know what it's like to be told that you can't possibly love the person you love most in the world, and that the love you feel for them is part of being damaged, and wrong. You have no idea.

No, I said. I don't.

She was silent for a while. The Bible says, Know ye not that we shall judge angels? He liked that. I think it was his favourite verse. It was in the letter he left me, too. I never showed the letter to anyone.

You seem to know what you think, I said. And what you feel. That's something.

She nodded, absently. The last time you were in this place, you didn't even know what I looked like, she said, and her voice was low and drowsy. Everything else was the same, but you didn't know who I was. You'd only just found out I existed. That's right, isn't it?

Yes, I said. I could barely speak.

How can such a simple truth change everything? But change is always simple. I sometimes think now that if I'd been walking the fields on Pugh's farm, or passing by the whins above the warehouse, and God's still, small voice had come from a burning bush the way it came to Moses, the way Christine's came to me that day, I would
have obeyed without doubting it, and without surprise. And why not? I ask myself now, after half a lifetime spent wondering. We're all believers for as long as we sleep, and nothing we dream is strange until we wake. And maybe that's just how they happen, the big, irrevocable changes in our lives, underneath their dull material facts. We go through the looking glass, we wrestle the angel, we stumble on the goddess bathing naked. We hear the voice that tells us to sacrifice our son, and we pretend we have all kinds of answers to it, reasonable and human, but maybe all we have is Abraham's weary Here I am.

It's like I'd just been born, in your mind, she said. She moved her face to mine and before I had time to even register what was happening we were kissing, hard and clumsy. I pulled her on top of me, felt her grind herself against my thigh and raised it, forcing her legs wider. Straining, I worked an arm between us and found the button of her jeans, opened it and tugged at the zip. She gasped as I drove my fingers lower, jamming them between denim and skin, finding the thin cotton underneath. I heard myself moaning at the back of my throat but kept my mouth clamped to hers. Raising my thigh again I lifted her closer so that her whole weight was bearing down on me. I thrust up and suddenly her mouth left mine to fasten at my neck.

No! I said, in a voice that didn't seem to belong to me. Don't mark me.

She rolled away as if she'd been kicked. She was breathing quick and shallow but not with passion. Something else.

I stared at her, touching my throat, not knowing what to say.

Someone's coming, she said simply, and buttoned and zipped her jeans before jumping to her feet.

I hadn't heard a thing but she was right – two young boys puffed by on the far side of the bushes, loaded golf bags slung over their backs. They glanced at us through a break in the gorse, then gave each other a look.

We should get back, Christine said matter-of-factly once they'd passed. She bent to kiss me lightly on the cheek then started back ahead of me down the slope.

The rest of the walk home passed in a blur. If we spoke at all, I can't remember anything of it. When we reached Bethesda she said she wanted to see the basement kitchen. You said you'd show me, she said. The day I arrived.

I know, I said, remembering.

I led her past the Clements' flat. The mumble of a TV show and the chinking of cutlery came from behind the closed door and just for a moment filled me with a kind of loneliness. I had the feeling that some kind of rescue was waiting, there in their stuffy living room of television shows, small talk, knitting, and dinners on trays, but we were already past the door and heading down the basement stairs.

The enormous kitchen was empty. Christine surveyed it for a few seconds, then wandered up along the side of the long bench table, staring at the iron hobs ranged along the walls. When she came back to me she ran her open hand up my forearm, stroking it without closing her fingers. I almost reached for her, but held myself back.

What's in there? she said softly, looking past me, back through the kitchen doorway.

A dining room. I turned to face it.

She left my side and walked to its glass-panelled door. She peered in. Everything's covered with cloths, she said. All the tables. You can see the shapes of glasses and dishes under them. It's horrible.

I moved behind her and put my hands around her waist. She didn't move them.

It's like in old films where rooms have been left because someone's died in them, she went on. She pressed her forehead to the glass, staring deeper into the unlit room.

I got myself locked in there once, I said.

She stayed turned to the glass. How?

There'd been storms and high tides and they'd had to take the floor up in the far corner. I wandered in to look around because I'd never seen the door open before. Anyway, the next thing I knew the key was turning in the lock.

Why didn't you shout?

Too embarrassed. We hadn't long moved in and I didn't want Clement thinking I'd been snooping, or trying to thieve something. In the end I climbed through one of those little half windows into the yard. I pointed to the windows through the glass. They didn't look much bigger than cat-flaps from where we were standing now and it was strange to think of hauling myself through one of them.

You fitted through one of those?

I laughed and nodded. Despite what had happened, and was happening between us, I was enjoying telling her the story. Then, I said, I had to get past Clement's old Alsatian in the yard. He actually bit me on the arse as I climbed the wall.

Christine half turned her head against my chest. Did
they ever find out?

No, I don't think so. They never said anything, anyway.

She leaned back a little more strongly against me, but now I'd spoken about it I found my mind drifting back to what I'd seen in the room after the storms. Where the floorboards had been pulled away there was a space around a foot deep, then sand and shingle. In the bad light it seemed colourless – a kind of ghost beach. I was startled to see it there, stretching off into the shadows. It struck me that it must all have been lying there, sand and pebbles and bleached shells, since the buildings went up more than a century before – a buried, silent night-beach running under half the town. I remember dreaming about it not long afterwards and waking up convinced that my father, wherever he was now, had died in the night while I slept.

Christine levered the cheap gilt door handle and pushed, but it was locked as usual and didn't budge. Why are you living here? she asked.

I almost laughed. It's not so bad, is it?

She shrugged and let go of the handle. Her free hand drifted back to the side of my thigh, stroking it gently.

My chest felt too tight with her weight against it, and I wanted to breathe deep to take the pressure off, but didn't want her to think it was a sigh. Instead I slipped the tips of my fingers under the tight waistband of her jeans and she drew her stomach in, making space. I slid both hands deeper, till my knuckles caught, and she breathed out to trap them there.

Footsteps tramped on the staircase over our heads. Students, I said, and let her go.

She rearranged her shirt, tucking it back neatly into her
jeans. Without speaking we made our way past the two girls on the stairs and up to the flat.

Jenny went out of her way all through that evening to be cheerful and to make up with Christine. She'd made a big pasta bake for when we got in and announced it as soon as we came through the door. I remembered you saying you liked Italian food, she told her sister.

Christine seemed calm and quietly cheerful and that helped me keep my own mood up, though whenever they were out of my sight together my stomach went into a guilty, fearful cramp.

At the table Christine chatted brightly about the hotel we couldn't get into and the fat, fierce woman there. Afterwards she helped with Michael and then with the dishes after Jenny suggested they left him with me while they saw to the kitchen.

For the endless minutes they were gone I paced the flat's two rooms with Michael lodged like a deadweight in my arms. I dreaded Jenny's return, imagining her broken by some tearful confession, but at the same time craved Christine's presence whatever the circumstance.

But there was no confession, and once they were back the time passed quickly – they laughed together over simple things and drank more of the wine I fetched from the basement.

Later still, in bed at night, I lay restless and hard –
Go and see
, she'd said, that day on the beach;
go and see
– until Jenny, sensing something, turned to me and ran her small hands over my body, bit my face and neck, chest and sides, nipping and breathing onto the pinked flesh. She can sense the new life in me, I remember thinking with
a kind of horror, even as I rolled towards her and lifted myself, then drew her to her knees; she can sense the new life and she thinks it's for her.

Nine

It wasn't until mid-morning of the next day that Christine mentioned Bill Kerrigan's party. She'd swum for longer that day, and Jenny had begun to get nervous, waking me and insisting I get dressed in case of some emergency. The wind had picked up earlier than usual and every few minutes she'd drifted to the window to check on the choppiness of the sea.

When Christine did return her mood had changed from the evening before. She wasn't high now, though an air of contentment, maybe a kind of triumph, still surrounded her when she smiled or spoke. It unnerved me, and maybe at some deep level it unsettled Jenny, too, though she couldn't have known why.

I didn't know if you'd still want to go, Jenny said to neither of us in particular, and it fell between us awkwardly. We had a nice time last night just the three of us, didn't we?

I'd like to, Christine said at last. I've been looking forward to it.

Jenny shrugged and sucked at a nail she'd been biting.

Do you still want to go, Luke? Christine fixed me with a wide open, innocent look.

I don't mind. I'm happy to go if you want to.

There was silence for a while. That's fine, then, Jenny said at last, and clamped her fingers between her thighs like that was the only way she could keep from tearing them to the bone.

Christine unwound herself out of her chair and padded through to Michael's cot. She'd come down from her shower barefoot, wearing just a faded cotton shift that seemed in some simple, unabashed way to make her body seem more naked than if it were bare. He was banging a toy at the bars and I heard her baby-talk to him, then lift him out. I glanced at Jenny but she resisted calling her sister through or turning to watch her. She closed her eyes and cocked her head instinctively, listening like a wild animal or bird.

In the afternoon I had a three-hour warehouse shift and it kept me mindlessly busy – there were four deliveries to wait on and though none of the stock was too heavy it was hard, repetitive work shuttling between the lorries and the warehouse stacks.

On the way home I had nothing to keep my mind off the fact that Jenny and Christine had spent hours together, talking, and so I felt no surprise, just a kind of sickened resignation, when I heard the muffled sounds of a quarrel from behind the flat door. It wasn't that I imagined Christine feeling remorse for what we'd done, and for what seemed to be happening between us, but that some kind of crisis, some kind of release was simply the next unavoidable stage on the path I was suddenly and haplessly stumbling along, like a sleepwalker following a voice in a dream, and nearing the top of the stairs.

I waited in the corridor for a few minutes, but couldn't make out any words. Finally I put my key to the lock, turned it and walked in.

Just don't then! That's all! Just don't! I heard Jenny yell. Then: Luke, she said, catching sight of me stood in
the doorway. Her voice fell quiet, like a switch had been flicked inside her. She was holding Michael tight to her chest, and in an instant I knew the quarrel was over him and nothing to do with me at all.

Christine didn't turn to acknowledge me. She was sat rigid on the edge of the sofa, her back straight but shoulders narrowed up like she was flinching from a blow.

What's going on? I said, hearing my voice like a stranger's.

Jenny shook her head without answering. She lowered Michael a few inches and pressed her lips against the crown of his head. Nothing, she said at last, raising her lips from his hair, but keeping her face bowed. It wasn't anything, was it, Chris?

Christine shrugged stiffly.

Well, I said awkwardly, I'll make coffee. Who wants one?

Jenny shook her head again and Christine simply ignored me.

Despite the tension, as I turned to go my whole body felt flooded with relief, as if a blood transfusion had drained me in seconds and now was pumping me full again. The problem with Michael, whatever it was, just felt like one of the poisons about to be irrigated out. I took the stairs to the kitchen in bounds and drank my coffee there, my whole body quivering. I gave Jenny and Christine twenty minutes, then went back down to them.