Names for Nothingness (22 page)

Her clothes were soaked through and she searched for the keys in her pocket. She had left them in the ignition without realising, but when she turned them, the engine did not click over. It grated, an ugly sound; not once but each time she tried again. The rain was hammering against the window, unbelievably loud, and she shouted out, ‘Fuck this,' her voice drowned by the torrent, as she realised she had no choice but to sleep the night, drenched and exhausted, on the back seat, unable to get help until the morning.

L
IAM CALLS
S
HARN AGAIN
. It is after ten. He has put Essie to bed and he has eaten some of the fruit and nuts that Christian gave him, aware that he has been putting off speaking to her, not wanting the reality of their situation to stand, stark and harsh, in front of him.

‘I'm here,' he tells her, and she is silent for a moment, unwilling to give anything to the conversation.

‘Where?' she eventually asks.

He tells her the name of the town and the pub where he is staying. ‘But I'm not sure how to get to the house.'

‘You'll have to ask,' she says.

‘I am asking.'

She says she doesn't really remember, that it was so long ago, but he knows she is not speaking the truth, and he waits.

The directions, when she gives them, are vague, but he
scribbles them down, knowing they are probably more accurate than she would like him to believe.

‘Why are you doing this?' Her voice has that sharp pitch he knows well, and it exhausts him. He does not want to go back to an argument that they have already had, one that they are incapable of resolving, and he tells her this, speaking softly so as not to wake Essie, who sleeps curled up in the middle of the bed.

‘You know what I mean,' she says.

He doesn't.

‘You should have told me. We should have gone together.'

‘I did tell you. I always said I would do this.'

‘But you didn't say you were actually going. You didn't get me to come with you.'

She is technically right. She usually is. He does not have the energy to explain that this is not the point, that if he had asked her, she would have said no. He knows this and she knows this. But it is all in the land of the hypothetical and entering that territory would get him nowhere.

‘I've been driving all day,' he says. ‘I haven't eaten. I'm exhausted.'

‘So?'

He sighs. ‘I'll call you tomorrow.'

‘No. Don't go.' Her words are tinged with hysteria, and then he hears her intake of breath as she asks him again, more calmly, not to hang up. ‘Please.'

‘How's Essie?'

‘She's fine. A bit sick of being in the car, but she's remarkably well behaved about it all.'

There is silence again, and he screws up the paper bag containing the last of Christian's food and tosses it across the room. It misses the wastepaper basket by the bathroom door and rolls under a vinyl chair in the corner.

‘Maybe we should just face facts.'

He knows where she is heading and he does not want to go there.

‘Maybe it's over.'

She is pushing him. Short, sharp jabs, and he does not know if he has the strength or heart to stand still and take it. Not now, he thinks. Not now.

‘I mean, maybe you don't love me anymore. Maybe it's been over for a long time, and we should just be adult about it.'

He sighs. ‘Don't do this.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I'm tired. Because it's just going to get ugly.'

‘Well, say it. Do you still love me? Do you want us to stay together?'

‘I don't know.'

She is silent again, and he wants to hang up. To put the phone down and go to sleep.

‘What about you?' he asks. ‘Can you honestly say you still love me?' He knows she can't. It has been a long time since either of them has said those words to the other.

‘Maybe love isn't the point.'

Maybe it isn't. He doesn't know. She is dragging him down into murky waters, and he feels as though all his senses are clogged with mud, reeds, leaves and dirt. He cannot breathe.

‘So, that's it, then?' she asks. ‘After all these years?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, it sounds like it.'

‘Can't we just wait until I get back?'

‘Why?'

‘Because we should talk.'

‘What about?'

He leans forward on the bed and stares at the brown flecks in the carpet. She has twisted and tangled him, caught him
tight in a net and he knows he walked right in there. He breathes in deeply and closes his eyes. It is himself he sees. Standing high in the mountains in Nepal. Footage from all those years ago. His face young and joyous, the sky impossibly blue behind him, and he wants to remember what he was like. Younger. That is obvious, and he smiles to himself. Happier? It is a question he does not want to ask. A weight shifts, lifts from him as he becomes, for one brief instant, a young man again; a young man who held an icy snowball in his hands, the fresh, sharp air stinging his cheeks as he looked out to the next bend in the path, no further than that.

‘I'm going to go.'

She may be crying now. He doesn't know.

‘I am sorry,' she eventually says, and he is surprised at the softness of her words.

‘For what?'

She does not reply, and they sit, miles apart, in silence.

‘For not being good enough.'

In the dimness of the room, he can only stare at the ceiling, his eyes unblinking as he looks at the moths clustering around the light.

It is some time before he realises she has hung up, and as he puts the phone down, he turns to where Essie sleeps, silent and peaceful.

Christian is in the next room. The light is still on, a sliver of white around the edge of the doorframe, and Liam knocks softly. ‘Can I come in?'

He is lying on top of the bed, dressed only in a sarong, and reading a guidebook. He is continuing his journey with no definite plans as to when he will return. He looks up at Liam and puts the book to one side.

‘Are you all right?'

Standing in the doorway, Liam realises that the intimacy
they shared in the car has gone. They are two men who do not know each other, and who will probably never see each other again. He had come to the room wanting to talk, but now that he is here, he just wants to be alone, and he asks Christian if he will listen out for Essie while he goes for a walk.

It is a warm evening, still and clear, and high overhead the stars appear to spin through the darkness of the sky. Liam lies on a park bench and looks up. He is relieved to be out of the cramped confines of car and hotel room, and he stretches his whole body out, letting each tired muscle relax.

He does not know what he will find tomorrow. There is a part of him that is fearful it will be as Sharn described, and that he will drive out there to discover he has made a mistake; that he will be forced to return with Essie, forced to face Sharn, who will tell him she told him so, words she readily uses each time he fucks up.

He remembers her telling him how she stood outside the gates, still wet from the night before, and called out for someone, anyone, to come and open up. No one answered her, and she felt like a fool, shouting out into the silence, her demands unheard.

When she eventually noticed a group of people in the distance, she shouted again, louder this time, but they gave no indication of being aware of her presence. She got into the car and sounded the horn, the noise obscenely loud in the quiet, but still no one came.

Eventually, she gave up. There was, she had told him, nothing for it but to climb over the gate.

Lying on the park bench now, Liam can see her, walking down the path she described for him, her head held high, her chin tilted upwards, only her eyes giving away her vulnerability.

She was halfway to the house when she saw someone approach. He was dressed in white and his robes fluttered,
like a butterfly's wings, against the deep green of the garden. When he came close, she saw that he was young, and beautiful, impossibly beautiful'.

He told Sharn that his name was Kalyani, and she, too, introduced herself.

He asked her what she was doing there. Did she know that it was private property, sacred grounds, and that she was trespassing?

As Liam remembers Sharn's tale, he is aware of a deep sadness settling, grey and heavy, in his stomach.

The park in which he is lying is lit by a single streetlamp, and he gets up and walks, slowly, back to the gate. He can see the pub at the end of the street. Only one window is illuminated. It is Christian's. He is waiting up for Liam to return.

‘You know,' Sharn said, ‘he looked so serene, so gentle, that I began to apologise. I began to feel that I was doing something profane, simply by being there.'

Liam crosses the road, her voice a constant in his head and heart. Everywhere I go, he thinks to himself, it is as though she is here with me.

‘And I said I was sorry. I told him I had a daughter, Caitlin, and that I wanted to see her, that was all. I just wanted to see her.'

He lets himself back into the pub, his entire being exhausted.

‘Thanks,' he calls out as he knocks on Christian's door, but there is no answer, just the sound of his snoring, deep, peaceful, from the quiet of his room, and he crawls into his own bed fully dressed, too tired even to take off his shoes.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Sharn wakes in the flat with the full glare of the morning sun in her face. She had not shut the curtains when she went to bed, exhausted, the night before.

She turns slowly and looks at the clock. It is just after eight.

She wants Liam.

The phone is on the floor next to the bed and as she picks it up, she remembers their conversation the previous evening, the words blunt in her consciousness. She asked him to tell her it was over. She grimaces at the memory. She pushed it, finally, to the edge, and left it there for him to send it shattering to the ground below.

But he hadn't. Not quite. And now that it is there, precarious, ready to fall, she wants only to save it.

She gets up. Her head is aching and her eyes are tired and sore. This morning Liam will be taking Essie to Caitlin. She
knows that much, but after that she has no idea where he will go or what he will do. It is the land beyond her tracking radar and it is vast, wild and terrifying.

She has to do something. It doesn't have to be like this, she just has to act fast enough, and she stands in the middle of their bedroom, wondering whether she should simply go. The idea moves from being an impossible one to a feasible course of action within a matter of seconds. If she leaves now, she can catch him, they can make this decision about Essie together, they can work it all out; it will be okay.

For one moment she does not move. The numerous possibilities unlocked by this plan have frozen her into complete stillness, and then she acts. She opens her cupboard, grabbing T-shirts, jeans, a dress; it doesn't matter, she throws everything on the bed, before pulling down an old shopping bag from the top of the wardrobe.

She calls work, knowing she will get the answer machine, and the message she leaves is brief, her voice calmer than she feels. She rings the airport next but all flights are booked. She tries State Rail. There is a train north at ten o'clock.

She locks the flat behind her and steps out into the cool of the autumn morning. It is peak hour and several buses go past without stopping. She is about to hail a taxi when one finally pulls over to take passengers.

She is the last person on and she has to stand, pressed in against a group of school kids and an old woman who grumbles that no one is giving up their seat. Her bag takes up too much room and she tries to stuff it into the rack above one of the wheels, but it topples out and lands on the old woman's foot. Apologising, Sharn attempts to move further back into the bus, but there is no space.

The traffic is heavy and she looks at her watch anxiously. She has enough time, she tells herself as the bus crawls slowly
up the hill, it is all right, and at each stop more people pile on, bodies pressed against bodies, the engine groaning with the weight of the load.

When they get to Central Station she does not know where to go. She has not caught the country trains for years and she stands for a moment, dazed by the array of signs directing commuters to different platforms, different lines.

She calls Liam before she does anything. The first phone box she tries takes cards only, the second is broken and the third works. She dials his mobile number and there is, as she expected, only his message bank. She does not even know if he will be able to retrieve her call or whether he will be out of range, but she tells him she is coming.

‘I'm about to get on the train,' she says, and then, hesitating for one instant, she tells him that she loves him.

‘Just wait for me. At the pub in town.'

She hangs up, suddenly uncertain as to whether she is doing the right thing after all, because she does not know if he will want to see her. She imagines him now with Caitlin, and she flinches.

‘Look with your own eyes,' she had said, and that is what he would be doing. Seeing, hearing, as Liam sees and hears. He is not her. The world is a different place for him. He will not understand, and she is suddenly scared of the conclusion he will draw, the gaps he will fail to fill in. She did tell him the truth. She did not tell him everything, but she did tell him the truth.

An old drunk is sitting on the ground behind her. He has a placard near his feet: ‘Suffer the little children' scrawled in black across dirty cardboard. As she steps back from the phone box, she kicks it by accident, sending it flying, the coins that have been tossed onto it scattering in its wake. She bends to retrieve them, and he reaches out and seizes her wrist, his
breath sour in her face as he asks her if she has a couple of dollars, ‘for a coffee', he says, his eyes sly as he meets her gaze.