Mercy Seat Read online

  How long can we wait? she asked at last, and slipped her arm under my jacket and around my waist. It’s getting dark already.

  It’s just the clouds and the trees making it dark, I said, not wanting to move now she was close again. It’s not late.

  She pressed more tightly and I realised she was shivering. Check the time, she said.

  I lifted my arm to read my watch. Nearly five, I told her, though she could see for herself.

  Show me the farm before we go.

  I started up the slope, leading this time, careful not to whip any of the trailing branches back at Christine. Our feet were almost silent on the brown carpet of needles and any sounds we did make were masked by the rain’s long soughing all around us. More than once I found myself stopping just to check there was still someone behind me, and each time Christine halted when I looked, keeping a certain distance between us, staring back without expression until I turned and trudged on again.

  We’d climbed the main part of the slope and the white of the van was visible through the trees when Christine caught up with me and said quietly that a ram was watching us from the path. Look how it’s staring, she said. He must have followed us up.

  Move a bit deeper into the trees, I said, and she laughed. I’d been butted by the old ram on Pugh’s farm a couple of times – losing my feet completely once – and I knew that given a good run up a full-grown ram could snap a leg or a hip without much trouble. Go on, I insisted. Move further in.

  She stooped low and eased her way through the next rank of trees and the ram lowered its head, sizing us up. Fuck off! Get away! I yelled at it, and Christine laughed again. The ram stayed completely still, letting the downpour wash over it, the heavy drops soaking into the dirty wool of its coat or spattering on its bowed, bony head. It’s all right, she said. He’s just curious, like us. She smoothed her hair back with the flat of her hand, then carried on up to the van.

  I turned and followed her, glancing back once to see the ram still motionless but staring after me through the rain.

  Christine stayed ahead of me until she reached the road, then waited under what little cover there was below the pines’ wiry branches while I crossed the track and opened up the cab. We can’t walk in this, I called to her, it’s hopeless. I’ll drive on a bit and you can see the farm from higher up.

  Every few hundred yards there were passing places for farm traffic and as we climbed higher it wasn’t long before I found one that overlooked the farm nested in trees in the distance. Only the roofs of the main building and tallest sheds were visible, but beyond them we could see the fields and dry-stone walls with their sprinkling of distant sheep. I left the engine running while Christine craned forward and rubbed the mist from the windscreen, trying to make sense of the view. The rain had stopped again and the far side of the valley was visible, its tops shrouded in folds of dark cloud. They were drifting towards us like smoke, heavy and grainy in the late light, blowing inland from the sea. Where’s the caravan? she asked.

  Somewhere in the trees. Not far from the roof of the barn.

  I wish we could see it, she said.

  Why?

  She didn’t answer.

  A small dark figure was following the line of the highest wall, where the last of the pasture gave way to the bracken and heather of the hilltops. Meirion, I said. Look. I pointed out the tramping figure, inching distantly along the pale contour of the stonework. We watched until he reached the edge of the pine plantation above the farmhouse, then lost sight of him as he crossed a ditch with its black thread of water and passed into the trees. A fine drizzle began, noiseless, speckling the windscreen and blotting out the brief glimpse of the fields.

  I heard the snick of Christine’s seat belt opening, heard her body in its nylon rain jacket sliding from her seat, then felt the movement of her hands on my thighs, the tugging of her fingers at the button and zip of my jeans. I looked down at the dark wet strands of her hair, tied back tight to the scalp, and with a feeling more like sadness than desire smelt the resinous, wintry scent of the woods and the weather that had closed in all around us rising up from her bowed head. And then the world and everything in it closed down to a single point of soft, smooth warmth as her mouth closed over me and moved in a slow, mesmeric rhythm that carried me, gently, body and mind, like the dipping and rising of the sea. I remembered the sensation I’d felt alone on the small waves, under the stars, the night I followed Christine and swam out from the cliffs. I was suspended again now, aware that my whole life was swaying on a single, dizzying, balancing point, fine as the tip of a nerve. Why didn’t I wake and move, shout out even? Why didn’t I struggle back to solid land – to Jenny, Michael, a life of choices like solid objects that might be built up, with luck and time, into the same shapes other people made of their lives? I’d swum back to shore that night with Christine, and kept my skin. Why couldn’t I swim back now? Was it simply and brutally that I didn’t know I could be loved?

  The sound of a sluggish engine, and of big wheels bumping down the dirt road, came down to us from somewhere beyond the bend where we’d parked. I felt Christine’s body tense and freeze under my arm, and abruptly she pulled away and lifted herself to sit upright in her seat. We both watched the truck drawing near through the bad light. It came down the incline slowly, lurching from rut to rut. The driver, a pale narrow-faced man in a farmer’s flat cap, stared at us – at Christine in particular – as he passed but didn’t alter his fixed, bored expression. In the back of the flat-bed truck stood a heifer wrapped tight to the neck in heavy, clear polythene. It seemed to be lashed to the side panels with canvas straps. Look at that, Christine murmured. It’s awful. Why is it wrapped up like that?

  We should get back, I said at last, once the truck was out of sight.

  Don’t go fast. Don’t catch up with the truck, Christine said. She shifted nearer the door and stared out towards the farm, still hidden behind mist and rain, then reached up and dragged the seat belt across her chest.

  At the outskirts of town I asked Christine where she wanted to be dropped. Have you got anywhere to stay? I asked.

  Drop me at the station. I left my bags in the lockers there.

  But where are you staying? Have you got anywhere to sleep?

  It’s fine, she said. Just drop me at the station.

  The only parking space I could find was outside Jenny’s old digs – at any moment I half expected to see Mrs Horace dragging her tartan shopping trolley along the pavement towards us – but the road stayed empty except for the occasional car hissing through puddles of water, their bleary headlights staring through the gloom.

  She opened the door and would have slipped down to the pavement and away without a word, I’m sure, so I said: Chris. Will I see you again?

  I don’t know. Will you? she said, then stepped down and slammed the door without looking back.

  The lights were still on in the shop-front window when I parked at Anzani’s, though the closed sign was up. He must have been listening for the engine because I’d hardly finished locking the van when he opened the door behind me, the shop bell tinkling festively at his back.

  Hey Luke, what weather, eh? Everything go okay?

  Fine.

  The rain held you up, eh? Any problems with the engine.

  I gave him the keys. Some, I said, but I got it going again. Just the damp.

  It’s a bastard in the wet, he said, nodding. He took the keys and that’s when we both noticed Christine watching us from across the street. She hadn’t collected her bags yet and I couldn’t tell if she was surprised to see us or had cut through from the station with every intention of following. She gave no sign that she knew me. He stared back at her for a second, then looked at me again and cleared his throat. I’ll take it round to the yard. He glanced once more at Christine and frowned as if trying to place her. You get home now, he said, and retreated back into the shop.

  *

  Jenny reacted better than I’d expected to my gett
ing in so late. Whatever she’d felt and thought throughout the day while I was gone, now she wore the same calm, almost business-like mask that she’d put on earlier that morning to wake me and re-launch our lives.

  I made a casserole, she said, helping me peel off my soaked jacket and hanging it, dripping, from the back of the door. Change into dry clothes and I’ll fetch it down from the kitchen. Were the roads ok? I was getting worried about you.

  I had to go out to Strata Florida. Then out near the farm. The van cut out for a while, too. It was just really slow going, with all the rain on those crappy roads. I’m so tired, I said, and meant it – I felt as if I could drop to the floor and sleep.

  You must be hungry, too, she said. I nodded, forcing a smile, though it seemed impossible to even imagine eating. My empty stomach felt closed tight on itself, hard as a fist.

  I asked Mrs Clement to take Michael for a few hours, so we could eat in peace, just the two of us. I said I’d collect him at ten, before they go to bed. She’s good to us, isn’t she?

  She is, I said.

  While Jenny prepared the food upstairs in the kitchen I changed out of my wet clothes and then stared out of the bedroom window to the road below and the sea. The prom was almost empty – just a few walkers struggling against the wind, hunching against the rain and the spray lashing up from the seawall. It was almost dark now, hours early, the evening sun completely blotted out by the low, black storm-clouds rolling in without a break from the west. When I heard the table being set I went through to the living room.

  Jenny had laid out the table with a cloth and wine glasses and was trying to fix a candle onto a cheap brass holder I didn’t recognise. She smiled distractedly at me and tried again to get the candle secured. There’s a little spike in here to hold the candle, but the wax just keeps crumbling, she said.

  Where did you find that?

  In the basement kitchen, in one of the cupboards. I was looking for nice things, like serviette rings and side plates. I thought we never have anything like that, and it would be nice just for once. I found the candle there, too, but I think it’s too old. It’s all dried up and crumbly. She sighed. I’ll light it and make a pool of wax, and stick it in that. Will that work, do you think?

  I’ll try it, I said.

  I just want it to be nice.

  Jenny had bought two bottles of wine and we both drank steadily through the meal, each of us afraid to talk, I think. Somehow I managed to clear my plate though the food seemed to sit in my stomach like rocks. I cleared the dishes, made my way, drunk and numb, up to the kitchen with them and left them to soak. In the next door bathroom I doused my face with cold water before leaning out of the open window for a while, fighting back the urge to throw up into the toilet. Even at the back of the building the wind had tipped the bins in the yard and was clattering through the rubbish, rolling cans and bottles over the concrete. There was no sign of the dog. When my head began to clear I went back down to Jenny.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, smoking a long skinny joint. Drew gave me some, she said, smiling slackly. I thought what the hell, we need to relax tonight. She took another draw and held it out to me, but I shook my head. She hadn’t smoked since falling pregnant and the sight and smell of it now seemed ominous in some way.

  What if the Clements smell it? They’ll go nuts, I said.

  She nodded. Open the window, she said.

  Outside, the waves were beating at the topmost stones of the sea wall, plumes of spray snaking up as high as the window, wetting my face with their cold and salt. Through the soles of my feet I could feel the fabric of the building quiver with each heavy, booming crash. After a while I realised Jenny had come to stand and watch beside me. She stubbed the joint on the outside sill and flicked the butt out to the side of the window. It whirled up and disappeared. Close the window, she said, everything’s getting blown about in here.

  I took a last look at the breakers rolling in from the bay: black beyond the glimmer of the streetlights, streaked with foam. Beyond a certain point they were invisible in the dark, looming into view almost fully formed, and it made them seem unnatural, almost alien, as if they were sweeping in not from the familiar waters of the bay, but directly from the blackness of space.

  Jenny was in the bedroom when I left the window to join her. I waited, sitting back on the sofa with my eyes closed, wishing the whole churn of the evening were done and I could hide myself in sleep. If I could have slipped into death then, quietly, by a simple effort of will, I would have. But I felt her weight settling into the cushion at my side, and I opened my eyes again. She’d brought through a plastic shopping bag and set it down between us.

  Christine left this, she said, frowning at the bag as if opening it and looking inside were a puzzle too hard for her to solve.

  Do you know what’s in it?

  Shopping. Little things she bought when we were out together. Before we quarrelled.

  We should send them on. Did she forget them?

  No. She left a note with it. It said she didn’t want any of it and was leaving it for us, for letting her stay. I don’t want any of it, but I thought I should let you see it first, if you want. Unless you want to keep anything I’ll take it down to the bins when I go to fetch Michael.

  Did the note say anything else?

  Jenny didn’t reply at first, then: Yes. But it was written to me, she said.

  I took the bag and gently shook the contents out onto the sofa. There were a few small presents for Michael: a knitted cotton cap, a baby-sized T-shirt with a star on it and Twinkle Twinkle embroidered underneath, and a loosely stuffed monkey, the outsize label still hanging on a plastic staple through its ear. It was beige with skewed limbs and had a serious, melancholic set to its face, and I thought I could imagine Christine being taken with it. Next to it was an A4 sized poster, furled into a scroll. I ran the rubber band off it and opened it out. I’d seen the picture before in cheap poster shops and on students’ walls at parties – white gulls flying over a blue sea and a quote from Plato – ‘They can because they think they can.’

  Jenny made a soft, catching sound in her throat and I thought she was about to laugh at the poster, but when I looked up she was crying.

  Jen, what’s wrong? I said.

  She shook her head and bit hard on a knuckle, as if to stop herself howling, her eyes screwed tight in a kind of torment and her whole body quaking. I let the poster spring back on itself and put it back in the bag.

  What is it? I said, frightened now. She rarely cried – had cried properly and bitterly just once or twice in all the time I knew her – and this was worse than tears: it was like she was struggling to hold back some sudden, wild grief, or some physical agony. For Christ’s sake, Jen, just tell me. Please. What’s wrong?

  I waited then – five long minutes or more – until she brought herself under control again and began to breathe more normally. That poster made me think of something, she said. It’s something I’ve got to tell you. But I can’t tell you now – I’ve drunk too much. I’ll just go to pieces again. I’ll tell you one day, I promise. When we’ve forgotten all about the last two weeks.

  I reached for her clenched hand and drew it away from her mouth, then held it in my lap.

  It’s not about us, she said. It’s about me. You don’t need to worry.

  Of course I’m worried. Just tell me, I said. It’ll be ok.

  She pushed herself upright from the sofa and walked unsteadily to the table. Taking one of the paper napkins she blew her nose loudly and then folded the tissue into a wad and dabbed at her eyes. I’ll tell you about the poster anyway, she said. That’s just a silly story. It’s not what made me cry. She took a deep breath. When I was good friends with Bill we used to smoke dope and watch lots of cartoons on his video player, you know? Over and over again. Whole afternoons. We were such stoners. She smiled sheepishly, pressing the tissue to her nose. And anyway, one of his flatmates had that poster up on the wall, and we used to mak
e fun of it and make up other tag lines like ‘They can because they’re fucking seagulls for Christ’s sake’, and whenever Wile E. Coyote ran off a cliff after Bugs Bunny, and you know how he never falls until he realizes he’s in mid-air, and then he goes – gulp! – and whoosh, he has to fall? Well Bill would point at the poster and say, See – Plato’s right! She laughed and bubbled her nose into the tissue before coming back to sit with me again. He had this whole stupid theory about how cartoons reflect the way our minds actually work – so they’re like pictures of how we really feel about reality, even though we know logically that they don’t match up to the facts. And that’s what makes them comforting, you know, and funny. When he’s stoned, Bill can really go off on one.

  I wanted to hold her, then, but couldn’t bring myself to. Jenny picked up the gangly monkey and set it between her knees. I won’t throw you out, she said to it, you ugly little sad thing. I’ll take you to a charity shop. She began collecting up the other bits and pieces, dropping them back into the bag. I’ll get rid of these and fetch Michael, she said.

  Eleven

  A solitary green-keeper standing way off on one of the higher tees watches me jogging across the wide ninth fairway, leaving the warehouse behind me for the very last time, though I’ve no way of knowing it yet. He stares after me a while but soon I’m in the rough, heading for the trees along the river and the public footpath there. The long grass between the trees soaks my boots and jeans right up to the knees and the wet, flapping denim sticks to my shins as I walk.

  The river when I get to it is still rising, bullying over long wads of drowned grass. I cross at a new steel footbridge floored with grilled panels and through the mesh walkway I can see the river’s heavy, brown swirls nearly lapping my soles.

  Near the harbour, where the river widens and shallows for its last few hundred yards before emptying into the bay, I start passing fishermen hurrying to find places after their day’s work in offices, shops, schools. One or two are already thigh-deep in the currents, their lines licking out onto the eddies and sweeping down. A heavy fish leaps mid-stream and one of the fishermen rolls a swift, graceful cast out to cover it.