I’m sorry we couldn’t journey further together, grow old together. But I’m glad we did journey together, you and I. If true love could really perform miracles, as it does in the fairy tales — but it can’t, of course. Or maybe it has.
Thank you.
Natalie stares at the letter through her tears. Reads it again from the top. Can’t believe it. Likeness. Clinic. Bedrock. She doesn’t want to close the file in case it’s somehow lost; drags it to one side of the screen to see if there is anything else. But there is nothing else.
Nothing else. She looks up at the wall, where the portrait she didn’t draw doesn’t hang. You have the best of me, safe and sound. What did he mean? She gets slowly to her feet and drifts into the gloomy hall, where her eye is drawn to the small mirror hanging beside the coats.
It’s just her puffy face, looking back. But when she sees her face, she can see his face too, as it used to be: magisterial, patient, brimming with nerdy exuberance.
‘What does the F stand for, anyway?’
James F. Saunders peers out between the curtains across the broad, wet, lamp-lit street. Over the lowest of the shops opposite he can see faint headlights crawling along the coast road on the other side of the bay. He’s learned that you can love two women, and be true to both of them. He quietly, copiously radiates gratitude for Brenda’s change of heart — that she did not merely take him back, but sought him out freely, makes all the difference to them both — and wonder, too, at her strength and restless courage, and fierce solicitude for her vulnerability. Every night he lives out a parallel life with Becks in his dreams. Two emanations of the same self. The lost novel has risen again, inarticulate now, of no service to humanity, subsumed in the imperfect structure of his soul.
‘James?’
As he turns from the window, James is aware of a slight sensation of pressure, a restrictive ache in his head or in his chest, or maybe both. He blinks and rolls his shoulders, and it goes away. The questioner is Mike, sat behind a sort of Giant’s Causeway of tottering book piles. Economics, business and finance. Incomprehensible to James, and with offensive titles — he was going to toss the lot, but since Mike’s here he might as well check for any hidden gems.
‘James? The F?’
James looks at Brenda, just in from her evening run, sitting on the floor with one lycra-clad leg outstretched, touching her toes; apple-cheeked, the sleet still melting in her hair. As she shifts from one stretch to another, her body leaves moist imprints on the floorboards. At the suggestion of her doctor, she has started a blog. The Chainsaw Diaries. The entries — a dozen so far — are a sort of piss-take, with careless snaps of the back of the van, muddy boots, bad weather, her packed lunch, surrounded by equally careless prose littered with typos, grocer’s apostrophes and outdoorsy slang. After barely a month she has ten times as many followers as the pithy erudition tweeted by Upstart Books.
If he was dying, and he could choose anyone in the world to care for him, it would be Becks. Yes. But he’s not dying.
‘James?’
He turns to his friend — millionaire, player of the field, the one Becks loves — smiles broadly and replies with a Portuguese flourish.
‘Fortunato.’
Natalie Mock waits while her mother fills the teapot, assembles the tray and carries it solemnly to the table. This potent, versatile ritual with its amulets, incense and porcelain song. When at last the two cups are filled and consecrated and stand between them, her mother heaves a slow, preparatory sigh.
‘Well, my love. My poor love.’
‘Well.’
‘Here we are. You and me.’
Natalie nods slowly. But her gaze drifts from her mother’s broad, comforting face to the window behind her. A winged cloud has caught the setting sun. Without touching her tea, she pushes back her chair, walks round to the window and opens it. The burning angel is already fragmenting. Cold air has never felt so good.
The ancient sideboard clock drip, drip, drips, emptying one vessel, perhaps, but filling another.
Natalie’s heart beats in time.
About the Author
Thomas Maloney was born in Kent in 1979, grew up in London, and studied Physics at Oxford. His first novel, The Sacred Combe, was published in 2016. He lives in Oxfordshire with his family.
Copyright Page
Scribe Publications
18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
Published by Scribe 2018
Copyright © Thomas Maloney 2018
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
9781925322170 (Australian edition)
9781911344308 (UK edition)
9781925548266 (e-book)
CiP records for this title are available from the British Library and the National Library of Australia.
scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk