Salt on his face, between his toes, in his fingers, Theo blinked at Andy against the light and couldn’t work out what he was seeing on the other man’s face, or what he saw through the brilliance of the ocean-reflected sun. “It doesn’t matter,” he croaked. “It doesn’t matter. Dani said she’s your daughter and Dani is dead so this is all…”
Words rolled down.
Nothing more to say.
Andy watched the sea, Theo watched the land.
Andy said, “Lucy is my daughter.” Rocked a little while by the sea. “Lucy is my daughter. I got that, one night. I got it when the raging stopped, when I cut my wrists but didn’t die, men shouldn’t do that, men shouldn’t die, Dads shouldn’t ever… that was when I got it. Lucy is my daughter, and I left her. I left her. I fucking left her.”
Tears and blood, rolling into water.
“If she’s your daughter, will you… you gotta find her and tell her that… she can’t live like we do. The sea the sky the earth they never carried me I hate them for letting me be born for making me breathe I hate them I hate—but she gotta love ’em. If she’s your daughter you gotta find her, you gotta help her be something which isn’t… you know. You know.”
Shook his head. Stared at his hands.
“You’d best be going.”
Salt water ran out of Theo’s nose.
“There’s a queen, somewhere in the north. They give her prayers, blessed is the sky blessed are the falling leaves blessed are the daughters who—there’s a queen. The queen of the patties. If the kid, Lucy, if she wants a DNA test or something like that if she wants it…”
The sea rolled in and they lay in silence.
“Nothing changes. Nothing changes. That’s just the way it is and you fight against it just the way it is you go places and it still doesn’t change and you ask what the point of…”
Silence again, watching the sea.
“You walking?”
Theo crawled onto his hands and knees, waited a while, stood up, slipped, sat on the shingle, crawled onto his hands and knees, stood, swayed, waited a while, looked towards the land at the top of the curve of shingle, the town obscured by stone, only blue sky above.
“Don’t come back,” mused Andy. “Don’t come back. Tell Lucy it’s on her now. She’s got to make something she’s got to… tell her I’m… don’t come back.”
Theo crawled, hand and foot, up the slope of the shingle.
Andy watched the sea.
After a while he stood up, waded hip-deep in, letting the muddy swell knock against his balance, grit fill his shoes. He closed his eyes, and punched the water, screamed and wailed and hurled his fists, his arms, kicked out beneath the foaming waves he screamed and screamed and punched and punched and
Theo walked away.
Chapter 48
Walking inland.
Didn’t feel like the cliff path again didn’t think he could make the hills, there were stairs cut into the chalk but even then…
Fell by a windmill which had stopped spinning a long time ago.
Lay on the ground as the sun turned towards afternoon.
Walked crusted in salt shoes and socks and shrivelled-up feet. A USB stick inside his pocket. It wasn’t wet. That was a miracle, divine intervention, he thought he saw something in the flight of seagulls, thought there was meaning in the way they turned overhead.
He came to a farm and dogs barked and a child shouted and a man came charging with a shotgun which probably didn’t work, but Theo ran anyway and fell in a ditch and hid there a while as the sun moved towards night.
At sunset came to a village with a little church where all the people prayed and a little square outside the church where there were stalls to sell childhood teddy bears to raise money for the fight against cancer and a pub where the landlord knew everybody’s name.
But the pub landlord took one look at Theo and absolutely did not have a room for the night, so he walked on until he came to a house on the edge of town which doubled up as the dentist’s, and the dentist came out and said, “You’re in trouble?” and led him inside and sat him down in front of the electric fire in the living room as the TV played far too loud, and gave him tea and bread and said, “You can sleep in my son’s room. He’s gone away now. He wouldn’t mind you sleeping there. I’ll phone him to make sure.”
And the dentist went into the kitchen and tried phoning her son, and he didn’t answer, because he never did, and he didn’t reply to her texts, but that was okay, if he cared about someone sleeping in his former bed she was sure he would answer, absolutely he would.
Theo sat on the floor in front of the fire as the dentist watched the weather, a channel broadcasting nothing but temperatures and wind speeds, ocean currents and storms brewing in the Carolinas, no mention made of Kent, and accidentally he fell asleep in that place, and woke in the morning to find that the dentist had put a pillow under his head and a blanket over his shoulders, and had washed and dried his socks and laid them out by his shoes, along with a cheese and pickle sandwich and a set of rosary beads.
The rosary had belonged to her son too, but he’d forgotten to take it with him when he left home. One day, she knew he’d reclaim it.
“I give kindness to strangers. The Lord teaches us to give kindly, that’s how we find grace.”
The vicar came round to check in on Theo, and told him that Jesus was his salvation, and to give thanks. The dentist made tea and whispered, “I didn’t believe, but my son he believes, and I find that since he’s left home believing brings me closer to him. Believing makes me…”
“You’re very kind,” mumbled Theo. “You’re very…”
Time, when your face is all smashed up, is a little…
the ice on the canal
It creaks it cracks before the prow of the boat he hadn’t even noticed how deep the cold went into the marrow his fingers are blue the ice
Even thin ice can puncture the hull, can sink a narrowboat. They drown as they sleep they wake the water rushing down their noses it is
Even Neila dies, sometimes, in Theo’s dreams and time is…
From the room next door, mystic words:
“P2, P3, M1, M2… M2… P2 M2…”
The dentist pulled back the top lip of her patient and tutted at what she saw.
“Mrs. Trott, I did tell you that this day would come.”
The high whine of the electric drill, a whimper of pain.
Neila turns over the cards.
Four of coins, Temperance, ace of staves, Death (inverted), king of swords, the Emperor, ten of staves, eight of cups, the Hanged Man (inverted).
The Hanged Man is a complicated card. Restriction, letting go, sacrifice. Trapped between heaven and hell, perhaps supporting the heavens, maybe plunging into hell. Only the Tower is a trickier card to handle when it’s drawn.
Indecision. Martyrdom. Suspension of all things, a failure to act, the need to look at things from a new perspective, a willing victim a…
Neila doesn’t like the word “victim.”
If you’re “willing” then how are you a “victim”? Victim is the denial of choice, it is…
From the banks of the canal, shrieks of laughter through the night. She looks up from the cards, Theo from the stove, and they listen.
The laughter is the heady wildness of the poisoned mushroom, the crimson berry, the wild things who run naked through the dark.