Mercy Seat (20 page)

I took a last look at the breakers rolling in from the bay: black beyond the glimmer of the streetlights, streaked with foam. Beyond a certain point they were invisible in the dark, looming into view almost fully formed, and it made them seem unnatural, almost alien, as if they were sweeping in not from the familiar waters of the bay, but directly from the blackness of space.

Jenny was in the bedroom when I left the window to join her. I waited, sitting back on the sofa with my eyes
closed, wishing the whole churn of the evening were done and I could hide myself in sleep. If I could have slipped into death then, quietly, by a simple effort of will, I would have. But I felt her weight settling into the cushion at my side, and I opened my eyes again. She'd brought through a plastic shopping bag and set it down between us.

Christine left this, she said, frowning at the bag as if opening it and looking inside were a puzzle too hard for her to solve.

Do you know what's in it?

Shopping. Little things she bought when we were out together. Before we quarrelled.

We should send them on. Did she forget them?

No. She left a note with it. It said she didn't want any of it and was leaving it for us, for letting her stay. I don't want any of it, but I thought I should let you see it first, if you want. Unless you want to keep anything I'll take it down to the bins when I go to fetch Michael.

Did the note say anything else?

Jenny didn't reply at first, then: Yes. But it was written to me, she said.

I took the bag and gently shook the contents out onto the sofa. There were a few small presents for Michael: a knitted cotton cap, a baby-sized T-shirt with a star on it and Twinkle Twinkle embroidered underneath, and a loosely stuffed monkey, the outsize label still hanging on a plastic staple through its ear. It was beige with skewed limbs and had a serious, melancholic set to its face, and I thought I could imagine Christine being taken with it. Next to it was an A4 sized poster, furled into a scroll. I ran the rubber band off it and opened it out. I'd seen the picture before in cheap poster shops and on students' walls at parties – white
gulls flying over a blue sea and a quote from Plato – ‘They can because they think they can.'

Jenny made a soft, catching sound in her throat and I thought she was about to laugh at the poster, but when I looked up she was crying.

Jen, what's wrong? I said.

She shook her head and bit hard on a knuckle, as if to stop herself howling, her eyes screwed tight in a kind of torment and her whole body quaking. I let the poster spring back on itself and put it back in the bag.

What is it? I said, frightened now. She rarely cried – had cried properly and bitterly just once or twice in all the time I knew her – and this was worse than tears: it was like she was struggling to hold back some sudden, wild grief, or some physical agony. For Christ's sake, Jen, just tell me. Please. What's wrong?

I waited then – five long minutes or more – until she brought herself under control again and began to breathe more normally. That poster made me think of something, she said. It's something I've got to tell you. But I can't tell you now – I've drunk too much. I'll just go to pieces again. I'll tell you one day, I promise. When we've forgotten all about the last two weeks.

I reached for her clenched hand and drew it away from her mouth, then held it in my lap.

It's not about us, she said. It's about me. You don't need to worry.

Of course I'm worried. Just tell me, I said. It'll be ok.

She pushed herself upright from the sofa and walked unsteadily to the table. Taking one of the paper napkins she blew her nose loudly and then folded the tissue into a wad and dabbed at her eyes. I'll tell you about the poster
anyway, she said. That's just a silly story. It's not what made me cry. She took a deep breath. When I was good friends with Bill we used to smoke dope and watch lots of cartoons on his video player, you know? Over and over again. Whole afternoons. We were such stoners. She smiled sheepishly, pressing the tissue to her nose. And anyway, one of his flatmates had that poster up on the wall, and we used to make fun of it and make up other tag lines like ‘They can because they're fucking seagulls for Christ's sake', and whenever Wile E. Coyote ran off a cliff after Bugs Bunny, and you know how he never falls until he realizes he's in mid-air, and then he goes – gulp! – and whoosh, he has to fall? Well Bill would point at the poster and say, See – Plato's right! She laughed and bubbled her nose into the tissue before coming back to sit with me again. He had this whole stupid theory about how cartoons reflect the way our minds actually work – so they're like pictures of how we really feel about reality, even though we know logically that they don't match up to the facts. And that's what makes them comforting, you know, and funny. When he's stoned, Bill can really go off on one.

I wanted to hold her, then, but couldn't bring myself to. Jenny picked up the gangly monkey and set it between her knees. I won't throw you out, she said to it, you ugly little sad thing. I'll take you to a charity shop. She began collecting up the other bits and pieces, dropping them back into the bag. I'll get rid of these and fetch Michael, she said.

Eleven

A solitary green-keeper standing way off on one of the higher tees watches me jogging across the wide ninth fairway, leaving the warehouse behind me for the very last time, though I've no way of knowing it yet. He stares after me a while but soon I'm in the rough, heading for the trees along the river and the public footpath there. The long grass between the trees soaks my boots and jeans right up to the knees and the wet, flapping denim sticks to my shins as I walk.

The river when I get to it is still rising, bullying over long wads of drowned grass. I cross at a new steel footbridge floored with grilled panels and through the mesh walkway I can see the river's heavy, brown swirls nearly lapping my soles.

Near the harbour, where the river widens and shallows for its last few hundred yards before emptying into the bay, I start passing fishermen hurrying to find places after their day's work in offices, shops, schools. One or two are already thigh-deep in the currents, their lines licking out onto the eddies and sweeping down. A heavy fish leaps mid-stream and one of the fishermen rolls a swift, graceful cast out to cover it.

Duw, they're running now, eh? the fisherman calls to another much older angler just down from him. Really running, by Christ. He strips the line in expertly, working it fast to begin with, then slower over likely lies. Before
going on I wait for him to lay his line out again, hearing the heavy lure fizz across the path ahead of me on each back-cast.

Just before I reach the harbour one of the men hooks into a strong fish that doesn't show itself at first but just ploughs deep downstream for the open bay. The man's dressed more casually than the others – in denims and hiking boots, maybe he'd rushed to get to his spot on the river – and because he can't wade deep it takes him a good five minutes to get the fight under control. Without a net, he tries to haul the fish into a shallow backwater where he can drop the rod and lay his hands on it. Twice he gets it on its flank in the back-eddy, and each time it spasms out into the flow again before he can make his move. On the third attempt it thrashes the wrong way and hurls itself against the steep bank where, after a stunned moment, it starts to pound the mud wall with its tail. The sound of it carries far enough upstream for some of the other fishermen to crane their necks and stare. The man in the denim jacket splashes down onto his knees to it, blocking my view. I see his arm rise and fall as he bludgeons it with a rock. It makes the same sound the fish made, beating its tail against the bank.

Just past the mouth of the river I stop and watch the cormorants by the pier, thinking of the morning and of Jenny's dream. It seems years since I woke; years since I stood in the bathroom hearing Clement's dog barking in the yard below. One of the birds lifts its dark wings, as if ready to pronounce a benediction.

As I pass the penny arcade at the front of the pier the swing doors sweep open, nearly knocking me back, and a gang of school boys, still in uniform, push each other out
onto the prom, laughing and elbowing. Did you fucking see me, though? one of them keeps asking the others in a high, piping voice. They ignore him. The dummy fortune-teller in its glass booth jolts into life and starts going through its routine: the painted gypsy head jerking back, the wooden hand juddering over the crystal ball and a loud robotic voice promising
All the fun of the future, all the fun of the future – inside!
I follow the school kids along the road for a short while then turn left down the bay while they jostle and bicker straight on into town.

Inside the entrance hall to Bethesda I can hear the Clements' piano being played – first a few bars from some piano concerto, then
Greensleeves
. I stop to knock at the door and collect Michael, but on impulse decide to leave it for a while and give myself some time alone before taking him off their hands. For once there'd been no sign of Mrs Clement at the bay window. I move quickly up the first flight of stairs to get out of sight of the hall. On the second floor I pass the lanky, ginger-haired student on his way to the bath. He's naked except for an off-white towel pinched round his waist and a pair of earphones trailing to the Walkman in his hand. He grins and I slip past him before he can speak. When I get to the apartment door I lean my forehead against it, hearing the blood knocking in my temples as I dig in my pocket for the keys.

At first Christine doesn't turn from the cot to face me. She waits, drinking in my surprise and silence, then, still keeping her back to me, says, I thought you'd be home. I came to find you, and you weren't here.

Jesus, Chris. How did you get in?

The landlord saw me on the stairs. He said they were
looking after Michael, so I took him and came here.

You took Michael?

Now she turns, but doesn't leave the cot. You knew I'd come back. You knew I hadn't left.

I nod dumbly. She's wearing the same clothes she wore the afternoon she arrived: the collarless, cream blouse buttoned to the throat and the simple, pale blue skirt like a patch of sky. My heart's knocking in my throat and I have to pause before trusting myself to speak. How long have you been here?

She shrugs. I don't know, she says. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. When is Jennifer coming back?

Not till late. She has to make up for the time she took off last week.

Good. She runs a hand over her hair, but doesn't come towards me.

When I step inside I see that the bedroom door is wide open. There are cardboard boxes sitting on the bed: some of the boxes we'd stowed away for storage when we moved in. She's emptied them out, I realise as I look more closely: the bed is covered with photographs, letters and documents – my driver's license, even our birth certificates – unfolded and laid out amongst the jumble of images. When I turn to her, speechless, I notice that the cot is littered with them too: old photographs of my own and Jenny's, spread over Michael's blankets and even taped to the wooden bars, walling him in.

I found them in your box-room; I was nosy, is all she says, and all I can do is shake my head and stare at the strange, random collage.

Most of the photographs are Jenny's – one of the two girls, her and Christine, sat on an almost empty,
monochrome beach; a couple of Jenny alone with a black cat half the size of herself. Some of their mother, alone or with the girls. Some of their father, as a young man – one of him cloaked in graduation robes – and I realise with a start that Christine has added photographs of her own that she must have brought with her. I start gathering them up.

Not yet. Please. Leave them a bit longer. I don't believe in photographs, she adds flatly, but I wanted to see everything all at once.

I nod, too bewildered to ask or care much what she means, and catch sight of a photograph of myself, as a small boy with my father. I'm sitting on a low red-brick wall, my father stood to my left in a dark security guard's uniform – just one of his many short-lived jobs as I was growing up – arms folded stoutly. We're in bright sunshine and both squinting so hard our eyes are completely hidden.

You're not glad to see me. You're frightened. I knew you would be.

I shake my head, still lost for words and distracted by the photograph. To the right of the wall there's just a glimpse of the red and white chevrons marking some kind of security barrier. I have a sudden, sharp memory of balancing my body on it as my father moves it up and down for me, an improvised swing: the ground falling away from my feet and then the ride back to earth, as slowly as falling in a dream.

Why won't you come near me then?

I lay the photographs back down on the bed and move to the cot, each movement feeling separate and awkward. Is Michael sleeping?

Yes, she says, moving to block my view. Don't disturb
him. Her head tilts to one side and her eyelids almost close, as if a sudden drowsiness is washing over her, too. He's peaceful, she says. She takes my hand and steers me to the sofa. The door to the box-room is ajar and through the gap I can see the mess she's made of my books, files and papers.

Don't watch me, she instructs, and turns away to unbutton her blouse.

Chris, I don't know, I say, but still with her back to me she slips off her skirt and underwear, then curls her body foetus-like on the sofa.

Hold me, she says, inching her body forward to make room for my body behind her.

I lower myself on to the cushions and her knees straighten a little to make room, though her arms stay folded across her chest.

For some time we just stay like that, listening to each other's breathing and feeling the beating of each other's heart. Eventually the sound comes of footsteps on the stairs and Alex's door opens, then bangs shut. Soon the sound of his music begins to leak through the wall, a looping dance beat. His door opens and slams shut again as he heads upstairs to the kitchen or bathroom.