He got up, to follow them out.
Though it was a long walk to the bus stop, the heavy case didn’t bother Frank. But the size was awkward, and now and again it slammed against his leg. ‘Thank God that’s over,’ he said, to bring Myra out of the dark silence by his side.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘At last. It’s happened. You don’t know what it means.’
‘We can set off in a few days, when you’ve got your passport renewed.’
The departure hadn’t been as bad as she’d imagined. She knew they’d both been dreading it, but now, as Frank said, it was over, and she couldn’t think of anything except the freedom and emptiness ahead. A few lights glowed from cottage windows, but the two shops were shut, and the pub hadn’t yet taken on its dim spark of evening life. Now and again a loud television set penetrated door and curtains. The street had no pavement, and they walked well into the road, away from the overhanging thatch. The bus and train would make a relaxing journey back to town.
He changed the suitcase to his outward side, not feeling much like speech — a silence which spread out the road to a greater length than when they’d walked it that afternoon. It was always longer travelling in the dark than by day. As a youth he’d often set off on the bike with friends, for the Peak District after a night at the pictures, and the journey seemed fifty times harder than in sunlight or even day-rain.
But now it gave time to let thoughts run through, a good moment for it because in a few days they’d be on the water, an end dropped like a dead fish into the sea, and a beginning drawn up like a corpse for resuscitation. In this unreal evening he had the feeling of already slipping out from the bank of an old life, not too much noise as he hit the water on a quiet stretch of this interior coast, and striking across the solitude of an unknown sea. For what? To go where? Getting out of your mother’s womb you were already there. Maybe you were even there at the first shot of your father’s prick. Life was wide, and maybe death was the only place where you could think about it. Or maybe life was death, and life was the only place where you could cogitate. If it was though, where was life? Life is in my eyes and my own two feet, and nothing more. Travelling across such water made for a cold journey, in spite of sun and daylight interspersing night and the presence of accompanying fishes. Dawns were cold and bitter, and only the first hours of darkness comfortable — like now, walking with Myra.
He switched the case over to the inside. ‘There won’t be long to wait,’ she said. Lights prowled a long way behind, somewhere on the road, like lions let out of a cage, skirting across the far flank of the eye as Frank half turned in changing the case over. A car engine snarled, as if some mad bastard was hell bent for his favourite country pub. He moved out of the way, giving him room to pass, Myra almost into the doors of the cottages.
The dimly lit bus shelter was a hundred yards away, no one else there. A lamp flickered on and off. The car seemed close, revved-up to choking point, but he didn’t turn round to see the make of it. Myra gripped his arm, as if she knew what would happen when it was too late.
It struck him, spun him against a garden hedge, a spade at his back and a thousand knives all going for his eyes at the same time. He heard a scream, then a tremendous shuddering smash as the car went out of control and hit the solid perpendicular wall of the church. He was falling through the red and black, the vast acreage of intestines in a vat as wide as the world and in which there was no stopping as black beat red and closed over him.
Part Three
20
The island lay like a death-mask, the tip of its black chin flashing a lighted pimple in dubious welcome to the ship that had steamed south all night from Barcelona. A few peasants and soldiers making the passage on deck watched the distended visage of the island coming out of its cavern of darkness. A soldier shivered in the November wind, spat some of his bodily warmth into the calm and indigo water, then raised his eyes to the first streak of light and turned to finish rolling his blanket. Another soldier drew off an enormous slice of bread with a razor-sharp clasp knife and sat down to eat it dry. The only noise was a heavy breathing of engines and the slop of parting water at the bows.
Frank buttoned his overcoat. On the night train from Paris a few dozen French soldiers had been singing and bawling up and down the corridors. They barged into compartments looking for seats to rest their tired and fuddled heads, and Frank had to ease one out who wanted solace on Myra’s lap. Frank gave up his seat so that she could make use of both. He had gone outside and smoked, talked as best he could to a dark-faced youth from a mining town in the Nord. The soldier pointed with staring exhausted eyes in the direction of the train: ‘Algeria! Algeria! Algeria!’ — his mock English pronunciation not quite matching the rhythm of their separate travels.
The moon showed its continents, like an X-ray plate held up to a lightbulb. He took bread and sausage from his pocket and began to eat, uncorked a bottle of cognac which he offered to the soldiers. Each took a sip in silence, as if afraid to speak before the day came, then handed it back. Frank was emerging from the debris and suffering of a prolonged battle. The nightmare of recovery left scars in, wiped scars out, scars cone-deep that almost robbed him of the desire for life — while his skin healed and gave back the possibility of it without consulting him. George had been killed, the pulp of him indistinguishable from the lip-twisted mass of his car. Myra had been unharmed in her body — the only good to come out of the ‘accident’. He could understand why George had done it, but not why he had missed, and killed himself alone. If he were determined to die he should have taken all three with him. By some failure of split-second reasoning he had bungled the job, robbed of his surveyor’s precision when he really needed it for the first and last time.
The ship never lifted the level of its silent advance, while stars and moon pushed back the limits of a cloudless sky. Myra was sleeping down in the ship. In spite of everything, and the past miscarriages, the child hung on in her body, grew and prospered beyond the danger point. And beyond that point she had decided to come with Frank, on balance to discard regret and bitterness and apathy, and to trust herself with him. It was a shade too close to be called a decision, but his persuasion worked and they were together. For how long was up to him, and up to her, as if the opening of her eyes every morning took place on the heels of a renewed consultation that would become less and less necessary, he hoped, as time went on and distances increased.
She was exhausted after their stay in Paris, and the days in Barcelona. It was hardly the time for travel, with the kid already kicking, but if you waited until it was time for anything at all you’d never shift one foot. The sound of George’s death wouldn’t leave her, a noise as if he’d tried to rend the night apart in order to see through it and beyond to a vivid daylight in which everything was clear and conspicuous — something ordered specially for him but which existed for no one at all, ever. Perhaps by trying to breach the night he’d hoped to find some reason as to why she was going away with Frank. There had to be something outside the immediate mad act of revenge and murder. His death hadn’t returned her love to the memory of him — if that was what he posthumously wanted.