And it snapped. With a crack that rang in the broken walls and tunnels and hollows of the amphitheater, the sword broke itself in two, vindictively, spitefully, and Cal staggered with the sudden shock of it, Shadow’s stifled scream, the words that hissed out of the dark. “It will serve you as you have served me.”
For a moment of terror he knew these were the voices; then he turned, and saw her standing there, the girl who had carried the Grail. She was wearing the same long dress, her hair braided up, but her face had changed; it was old now, so ugly, wrinkled, and heavily lidded that he would hardly have known her.
Horrified, he staggered back; Arthur caught his arm and said, “Who are you?”
The old woman’s smile was sour. “Hear me, King.” She turned, raising her voice. “Hear me, you, Arthur’s men.”
Kai was shouting orders; Hawk leaped down into the arena.
“Don’t listen,” Cal hissed desperately. “I don’t know her.”
Her finger stabbed at him. “Here is one who has betrayed you! Here is one who saw the holy things, and could not ask about them, not what the cup contains or who drinks from it! Who didn’t care why the lance bleeds! Here is one who denied they ever existed!” She turned around and glared at him, and to his terror her face flickered in the flame light, young and old, ugly and beautiful, as if the red glimmer of the light and the wind redefined it, and he knew it, and then it was strange, it changed as his mother changed, minute by minute.
Arthur made a swift downward jab with his hand; the men running toward him slowed, wary. “We know about this. But the boy is young; he . . .”
“You do not know the reason for his failure.” She was speaking to Cal now. “He cannot make a new life on the ruins of the old. There is a thing he has left undone. Unsaid. A weight on his soul. A woman he has abandoned. Until he goes to her and heals himself he will never find the Grail. And the Waste Land will remain waste, and the Fisher King will suffer his endless pain.” She spat at him; he jumped back. “He is a fool,” she hissed. “He has failed.”
The wind roared; a police siren echoed far off in the village. From the church, suddenly, joyously, the bells began to ring, a clashing, jangling frostiness of sound. It was midnight. It was Christmas.
“Who does she mean? Who is this?” Arthur was asking.
Cal swallowed. It was impossible to say the words but in sheer despair he said them. “My mother,” he whispered.
Shadow said, “Thérèse?”
He turned to her. “Not Thérèse.” The siren was loud now, the car racing up to the amphitheater, stopping with a squeal of brakes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, to her, to all of them.
“What?” Wary, Shadow glanced around, backed off. “Have you told the police about me? What have you done, Cal?”
The woman was going, turning and walking into the dark, and in her hands he saw she held a shape of darkness, veiled and hidden. From the entrance tunnel voices rang, angry, until Arthur roared, “Let them through!” his breath smoking in the frosty air.
Two figures. Running. A man and a woman.
“Don’t blame me,” Cal said miserably, clutching the sword. “I thought it was for the best. I did it for you. I’m sorry, Shadow.”
“You stupid, stupid fool!” she hissed.
The bells stopped instantly. And suddenly in the terrible silence, across the frosty field he saw that the man was Trevor, and the woman, breathless, one high-heeled shoe slipping off, was Thérèse.
Trevor grabbed him. “Cal! Thank God!”
“What? What is it?” He was icy with fear. Shivering, sweating with fear.
Trevor glanced at Arthur, then back. His face was aged and stricken in the red flames. “It’s your mother.”
“What!” In agony Cal flung the broken sword down. “What? For God’s sake tell me! Tell me!”
But it was Thérèse who came up and put her arms around him. It was Thérèse who told him that his mother was dead.
Stone
Chapter Seventeen
For when thou didst set out against her will,
pain leapt up in her . . .
Peredur
He edged the dusty net curtain aside and watched the street. Kids were in a gang on the corner, arguing. They climbed and perched on the old settee that was rotting there, absorbed totally in whatever the fight was about. One of them lit a cigarette, throwing the match down the drain. It amazed him that people could go on, as if nothing had happened. As if she was still alive.
The first night, with Trevor hushing the neighbors away into the back room, he had sat here and stared at the six o’clock news, waiting for the item to come up: woman, found dead in Bangor, the pills, the bottles of spirits. It hadn’t. It wasn’t important. It probably happened somewhere every day.
Now the taxi was turning the corner. It came up past the kids and crawled, looking for the number.
Cal glanced around, suddenly panicky. The room was quite empty, all the flat was. It looked stark and tiny and grubby; he could hardly believe all his life had been spent between these walls. He had a feeling he should be sentimental now, go around saying good-bye to places, like the room where . . . her room. But he couldn’t. He hated the place more than ever. He would never have to see it again.
Quickly, he picked up the rucksack and went outside, closing the front door with a clap, sending a few more flakes of its blistered paint scattering.
Sally must have been looking out; she was waiting by the taxi, and to Cal’s embarrassment she put her arms around him and squashed him to her. She was big, and smelled of soap.
“Bye, Sal,” he muttered.
Her eyes were red. “Look after yourself, boy. Give us a ring now and then, we’d be glad to hear from you, Cal. Don’t forget all about us.”
“No,” he said dully. He didn’t know what he meant by it. She was looking at him as if he was small and lost and he was and he couldn’t let her know, so he straightened up and got in the taxi and said, “The station,” as coldly as he could.
“Right, mate.” The taxi jerked and reversed and pulled away. Sally waved. He made himself wave back.
But once around the corner he sank into the seat, exhausted, as if some tacky elastic cord had snapped, and he was free. He couldn’t feel anything. He was numb.
There had been the funeral, in the big, cold church she had only gone to when she had nowhere else to go, and the cold rain in the cemetery, and all the neighbors looking at him. If it hadn’t been for Thérèse he’d never have gone through with it. They were all sorry, they said, but he knew what they thought. They blamed him. Going off, leaving her. They looked at his new work suit and the gray silk tie and they despised him. They were right to.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Thérèse had said. She meant well.
The inquest had been worse. Rhian had given evidence, a pretty woman with brown hair, flustered; she had come up to Cal after and said, “I’m so sorry,” and he’d thought that she didn’t know, did she, that no one knew except Trevor and Thérèse that he had killed her. That his staying away had killed her.
There had been doctors, and Sally and then Trevor, and the verdict had been left open, not even suicide, because she was so absentminded, Sally had said, and she might not have known she was taking too many. And she’d been drinking.
“Unfortunate,” the coroner had said. “An unfortunate and tragic event, and our sympathies to the family, especially her son.”
“Three pounds, mate,” the taxi driver said again, patiently.
Cal paid, got out, went into the station, sat and waited without thinking, staring at the advertisements on the wall, reading them over and over and not seeing them.