The Ecliptic (52 page)

Daylight tinted blue by parasols. The cosy dampness of a tent. I woke up feeling more exhausted than before I had passed out. Ceaseless pain around my collarbone, zipping
through my legs. I rested on the concrete, eyes shut, counting down the seconds. Things almost went to black. I nearly let it happen. But then I heard the clopping of a horse near by and the jangle
of its tack. Fear kept me awake. There was a noise of cart wheels on the road and a far-off voice called softly: ‘
Woe, woe, ayy.
’ And suddenly, another voice, much closer,
right beside my head. I winced, holding my breath. His feet scratched the ground—so near to me. He carried on in Turkish: a dead-end conversation. I thought I could smell smoke again, but no.
His feet scuttled up close to me and there were movements from above. Rustling and murmurs. The parasols were being lifted from me, one by one. There was nothing I could do. I lay there, waiting
like a louse under a rock. The daylight greyed. I was exposed. He spread his shadow over me. His hands stayed on his hips. A cigarette fuming at his mouth. I got to my knees, squinting back at him.
And I could see he wore a pale blue shirt with an embroidered crest:
POLIS
. He said something meaningless. He repeated it louder, flapping his arms. I took too long to
react: he stepped to me, grabbing my hand, pulling me up by my elbow. He might as well have shot me. I screamed so loud the crows dashed from the palm trees. Everything went white.

Then I was looking at the glossy backside of a horse. A man in a black cap was at the reins, facing the road. I was propped up in an open
fayton
with the
POLIS
man beside me. The horse was hoofing slowly down the track. We were curving back around the bay, the sea to our left, the scrabbly beach made clearer by the light of morning. A sloop was moored out
in the shallows, tilting on the waves.
‘Adiniz ne?’
said the
POLIS
man. I looked at him, afraid. He offered me a cigarette. I shook my head.
‘
Anliyor musunuz?
’ His arms were sprawled along the back seat of the carriage. The horse clopped on. I did not speak. I gazed towards the sea. I watched the listing of the
sloop at anchor. Upturned dinghies by the jetty. A bluff of trees across the bay. And then I caught a glimpse of something in the jumble of the beach: a long black shape upon the gravel. My canvas
roll, still in its plastic. The sea had brought it to me.

I stood up in the
fayton.
The wheels were rolling quickly, but I jumped. ‘
Hayir! Hayir!
’ called the
POLIS
man. The pain of the landing tore
me in half. I fell upon the road and hit my head. The last thing I heard was the
fayton
skidding to a stop. All the dismal voices I had pushed back in my mind escaped me then, as I lay
bleeding. They said that I should stay down in the dirt where I belonged.

A familiar kind of ceiling, low and speckled. I found myself in a magnolia room with the pain muted out, fluids going into me through a tube. Right arm in a sling and thirsting.
In the corner stood a dark-haired man in uniform, pure white and steam-pressed. He had three gold pips on his epaulettes and a face of consternation. ‘Do you know where you are?’ he
said, watching me stir. I shook my head.

I was not in a bed but on a padded trolley. They had dressed me up in pale blue fatigues. ‘This is the Naval Academy, the hospital bay,’ he said. ‘You were brought by the
police.’ I tried to clear my throat but nothing would come out. ‘Would you like some water?’ He filled a paper cup from a cooler by the wall and handed it to me. ‘Your
clavicle is broken. It will get better in a month or maybe two. There are some stitches in your head, but the scar I think will be OK. I can say that you are very lucky.’ The water was so
cold I could not taste it. ‘More?’ he said.

I gulped and hummed.

There was a youthful slouch about his step as he went to the cooler. But he was much too old to be a cadet. He must have been an officer. Passing me the cup again, he smiled. ‘What is your
name?’

I croaked it out: ‘Elspeth.’

‘Ah. You can speak,’ he said with a grin. He had teeth as bright and straight as his trouser seams. ‘
Elspess.
That is good. I like this name.’

I blinked at him.

He went to get a cardboard folder from a stand on the wall. Through the wire-glass in the door, I could see into the hallway. Framed photographs of sea cadets in dress regalia were hung from
floor to ceiling. ‘The police bring you here and tell me: she does not have any identifications. She has no name. They think you have no business here and so you do not deserve help from
anyone, but they do not want your blood to spill on their nice shoes, so they get me to look at you. There are some people in this life who do not have God’s kindness in them. Do you know
what I am saying to you?’

I blinked at him.

He flipped through the folder, reviewing his notes. ‘But now you have a name.
Elspess
. So, you see—you are a person now, like me and them. You are the same as everyone
else.’ He removed a clear plastic wallet from the folder. My ferry tokens weighted down the bottom corner. There was sheet of creased-up paper in there, too. He held it out for me to
scrutinise. ‘I did not show this to them,’ he said, ‘but maybe I will have to, for my own sake.’

It was MacKinney’s letter. Badly water-damaged. There was none of her usual cursive. Just the remnants of typewritten words, blotted out and paling:

It winded me. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘From your clothes. You are lucky that I found it before the police.’

I went quiet. I could not understand why Mac would give it to me. She must have handed me the wrong letter.

‘You know, I have treated some people like you here before,’ the doctor went on. ‘Coming down from that big house when they get sick. I cannot say that I am happy about this
arrangement, and I do not like those people up there very much, or their policeman friends. But I am a doctor—I will not say no to people needing care. And maybe you did not know this yet,
but being in the Navy does not make you rich.’ He half smiled, closing the letter back inside his folder. ‘So maybe I have to show it to the police so we can share that cash reward.
That is what they would like. Take the money and ask no questions. We can all buy nice big houses of our own. For our retirement.’ Returning the folder to the stand, he lingered by the door
with his back to me. His right arm reached down for the handle, not quite turning it. ‘But I think I have always liked ships more than houses. I am a Navy man. So what the police say is not
important.’

He spun round.

‘That line will come out, very easy, I can show you. Then I think you can get back to your feet.’ There was compassion in his voice, candour to his expression. ‘Because, you
know, strange things happen here when I am on duty. Cadets do not like staying in the hospital. They enjoy to be outside with their friends. And there is no locks on the doors here, so I cannot
make them stay.’ He stepped forward and began to disconnect the tube from my forearm. ‘Yes, they go down the steps and out of the gate. Nobody tries to stop them. It is
crazy.’

Lifting out the sharp little butterfly from my vein, he padded the bloodspot with cotton wool and tossed everything into the waste bin. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but he did not
acknowledge it.

‘I gave you codeine for your clavicle. The rest you must do by yourself. Good luck.’ He shut the door behind him and it did not lock. His feet went silently along the hall.

I got up. The floor seemed to wobble. There was a tightness in my breastbone. If I could make it to the beach again, I thought. If I could find my mural on the shore. If I could make it to the
ferry. If I could make it to the mainland. If I could make it home.

I rifled through the doctor’s folder to get my ferry tokens back. I hugged the walls, passing frames of posed cadets out in the hallway. My arm was strapped but I flinched with every
stride. There was no exit sign, only a set of steel doors to my left. I ran for them and broke into a stairwell, bounding down the concrete steps and out into the afternoon. Boys in deep-blue
uniforms were on the parade ground. Their heads turned as I hurried by. They were mumbling, pointing with their eyes. Five of them. Smokers. Sailor boys with nothing to do but suck on cigarettes
and gawp at injured women. A vast white building of too many windows stood beyond them. I could smell the Marmara but could not see it. Gulls were hustling in the sky.

I kept going.

Twenty, thirty yards until I reached the gate. An older cadet in full regalia was standing guard inside a wooden sentry box. The barrier was down, but I could hurdle it if I needed to. I knew
that I could. I carried on, blanking the soreness, pushing it back. There was a hopeful feeling in me. The guard would let me through, I knew it. But the other cadets were taunting me now,
shouting: ‘
Allez! Allez!
’ When I glanced back, they were gone. Only cars in the parade ground. Parking spaces. I began to slow.

Ahead of me, the guard had stepped out of his sentry box. He was raising the barrier. He was waving his gloved hand to hurry me through. But behind me, the shouts were getting louder, brighter.
They were coming from the sky. ‘Ellie!’ they said. ‘Ellie!’

Whatever you do,
Mac had warned me,
keep going.
So I did.

But then I saw a sign was screwed upon the middle of the barrier, slowly lifting, arcing through the sky. No Parking. No Admittance. No, something else. Its dotted lines grew sharper and more
definite.

I stopped.

The whole afternoon appeared to dim around me.

Those shouts were echoing still. ‘Ellie! Ellie!’

I turned back, gazing up at the roof of the building. No one was there. Just a row of blackened flues. A metal winch. But all the bright paintwork had now tarnished grey. There was a foreign
mizzle on my face.

‘Ellie, wait right there! Don’t move one inch! I’m coming down!’

I saw him. He was high up in the very top window, flailing his arms.

A studious fellow.