Mercy Seat Read online

  She doesn’t mention Christine apart from her being in the dream, before she became Max, but not Max, and we finish breakfast in silence. That’s where the last two weeks belong now, she wants me to understand; in a bad dream that doesn’t make any sense, in a story that she can end.

  By the time she leaves for work Michael’s calm again and I can read while he dozes in his cot. My mind won’t settle though and all I find myself doing for the next hour or so is making endless rounds of the living room, like a fish in a bowl, stopping each time at Michael’s cot to check on him.

  Finally, as if he can sense me looming there, Michael’s eyelids snap open. He fixes me for a second with an alert, adult stare, then bawls.

  For once I’m glad of the chance to pick him up and hush him. I take him with me around the room a few times and when he’s quietened down I take him to the window and try to interest him in the gulls and pigeons down below us on the seafront.

  The inside sill is just wide enough for him to be rested on. The sun’s much stronger now and I have to squint to bear the dazzle off the sea. The tide’s already well out. It must have been on the turn when I saw it lapping the wall just after dawn. The hours seem to have accumulated rather than passed, building up like a gradual, physical weight in my blood and brain, and I feel a deep sinking tiredness spread through me. Far out in the bay there’s a small motorboat heading south along the coast. It’s too early for paddlers or swimmers yet, and it’s a weekday morning anyway, but a few early sunbathers are lying half-dressed on the sand and shingle between the boulders and the sea-line.

  I look down at Michael. He’s reaching for a crisp dead fly lying belly-up at the corner of the sill. It’s well out of his reach so I don’t need to bother with it. I yawn, then yawn again, helplessly. The boat’s almost disappeared now, into the haze around the headland.

  Though he can’t have the fly, Michael seems peaceful enough. I take a last look out of the window, down at the pensioners, dog walkers and mothers with baby-buggies all wandering the prom. Then I take Michael over to the sofa with me, to Christine’s bed when she was here, just a bare few days ago, and lay my face on the cushion – her pillow for the nights she stayed – and half believe the dusty scent I’m inhaling is part of her. I hold Michael against my chest and we sleep facing the blue sky beyond the window.

  Late in the morning the shared phone in the corridor wakes me, my heart racing, and I realise that even in my sleep I was alert and listening for this, for Christine. Somehow, I stop myself going to it. Having Michael beside me, still sleeping, helps. I know there’s no one else on the floor at this time of the day and soon it’ll have to stop. Michael’s face is turned to mine. In his open mouth I can see the smooth doll’s teeth and where they haven’t come yet I see the pink, smoothly swollen gums. The ringing makes me feel nauseous and for an instant I imagine Michael’s milk-teeth mashing the fly on the sill. I close my eyes and wait, watching little scars of light float across the insides of my lids. I try to concentrate on them, on their jumps and drifts, and finally the ringing stops and I touch my face to the back of Michael’s head.

  In primary school I shared a desk for a while with a new boy: an English lad called Simon. His family came to the village – God knows why – from Hemel Hempstead, which by itself would have been enough to set him apart, but he was a misfit anyway. His high, piping voice, his plump little body and effeminate manners made him the target for all kinds of bullying, and sometimes he had fits where he’d foam at the mouth in the middle of the playground. But what was most interesting to me was being able to inspect the small, round white scars peppered on the skin behind his ears. They were smooth and a little hard to the touch. He used to boast that his father put them there with a lit cigarette when he was a baby, to get rid of his warts, he explained in all innocence, and I think it must have been true because they were about the right size. I saw his father often enough because he seemed to spend most days walking the family dog – a straining little terrier called Prince – up and down the long street we both lived on, and Simon’s story interested rather than shocked or frightened me. If I was with Simon – maybe walking home from school together – and we passed his father, the two of them would acknowledge each other with a quick, discreet nod, nothing more, which I found deeply impressive. There was a kind of dignified, adult mystery about the gesture, and for a while I remember imitating the nod whenever the three of us crossed paths. I used to imagine that his father would notice me by the signal and understand I was in on their pact, whatever that was.

  In the last few days she was here, Christine did things to Michael. Not like Simon’s father: she didn’t mark him, and Jenny never saw anything she told me about, but she sensed it. It was the reason Christine left when she did. I came in from the warehouse one afternoon to find Jenny yelling at her, not accusing her of anything directly; just telling her to leave him well alone. She stopped when she noticed I’d let myself in, and I pretended not to understand what was going on. Christine was sitting very upright on the sofa, dull-eyed and pale.

  I try to push the memory down. I’m sweating now, and Michael feels like a stone on my chest. I move my face away from Michael’s warm, rusk-scented head and study it. Under the wispy fair hair around the temple his pale blue veins are visible, branching under the white skin like patterns on an eggshell.

  Suddenly the phone clamours into life again, jangling like an alarm, and this time Michael wakes and grizzles and pushes feebly at my locked arms. As if that breaks a kind of spell I roll us both forward and lower him crying to the carpet. Then I make for the phone, unsteady after lying still for so long.

  I feel my throat almost paralysed with panic as I pick up the receiver, but it’s only Jenny on the other end.

  You’re there, she says. I was just about to give up.

  I lean a hand against the wall to steady myself. The thick patterns on the Anaglypta wallpaper feel reassuring. I was through in the box room, I lie.

  How’s Michael?

  He’s fine. He’s sleeping.

  Good.

  I wonder if I should ask if it was her that phoned earlier. I decide that if she did, she’ll mention it, so I keep quiet. Is anything wrong? I say.

  No – I had five minutes and just thought I’d ring. I was thinking about you both.

  In the background somebody in the office calls something to her, but the words are too muffled to make out. Her own voice becomes distant for a moment as she turns away from the mouthpiece and asks, what was that? to whoever spoke. She laughs abruptly, her voice still angled away from the phone. Then she’s back. Sorry, she says. Listen, I was wondering if you wanted to meet for lunch. It’s such a nice morning, I was thinking you could bring Michael and we could sit outside with a drink maybe.

  I don’t answer straight away – we never meet at lunch times any more, especially now that Michael has to be brought along, and I wonder what’s going on in her mind. What’s made you think of that? I say, more abruptly than I mean to and immediately regretting it.

  Well, don’t if you don’t want. Her sigh crackles down the line. It’s a nice day, and I don’t think it’ll last, that’s all.

  I don’t mean I don’t want to. I was just surprised.

  Well, but if it’s awkward.

  It’s not awkward, I say. It’s a good idea. Where do you want to meet?

  I don’t know. Maybe The Half Moon? In the beer garden. At one.

  Right. I’ll get ready.

  Thanks, she says.

  I picture the other workers in her office listening in to her thanking me, and wondering at it. For a difficult second or two I don’t know what else to say. I’d better go and sort Michael out, I manage at last. Bye, I say, and put the receiver down.

  Back in the living room Michael’s found his way to the fridge. I go over to him and scoop him away. I check him to see if he needs changing, but he’s clean so I lay him on his back in the cot. I feel almost frantic and can’t understand why, but I know i
t’s something to do with having expected to hear Christine’s voice, not Jenny’s, and having almost prepared myself to deal with that.

  As soon as Michael realises I’m putting him back in the cot he starts bawling again, and when I set him down his face colours up red as a welt and he starts thrashing around as wild as all the turmoil in my head.

  Christ, Michael, I say, and lift him out again. I can feel my heart working like an engine in my chest. I walk around with him for a while, letting him calm down. It’s okay, I say to him. It’s okay, okay, okay. You’re coming too.

  In the middle of the room I glance up from his shoulder and catch sight of my face in the mirror. I look furtive: narrow-eyed, like some animal slinking off with its prey. I turn Michael round to our reflections. Look, Michael, I say, trying to force some cheer into my voice. Who’s that then? Who’s that looking at us? Who’s that?

  Three

  I was in bed when Christine first arrived. I’d started going down with a virus about a week earlier – chicken pox probably, though I never got it diagnosed – and that morning it had broken out in small pink body-sores.

  Jenny led the way in, carrying the case, and Christine followed, smiling, alert. She peered intently at everything around her – the patterns on the lurid 1970s carpet, the big old Bakelite light switches, bulbous and stiff as breasts on a ship’s figurehead, the rickety sideboard, even the regulation steel bracket that pulled the door shut behind them with a sigh and a thump. She stared as if it was all completely exotic to her, and all the functions of things were obscure. It made me wonder if she’d ever seen the inside of a hotel before. It was nearly noon but the room was curtained and gloomy and must have smelled of both Michael and me having lain there all day. I think I was the last thing she gave her specimen-collector’s attention to.

  Here she is, the long lost little sister, Jenny announced. She dropped the case and hugged Christine, as if performing for me, then stepped back to admire her. She was nervous and breathless, but happy.

  Christine’s smile didn’t change. She had a mousy, innocent face, and the smile just about revealed the white glint of her front teeth.

  I told her you were on your deathbed, Jenny went on.

  Sorry, I said to Christine. Nice to meet you anyway. Open the curtains maybe.

  Christine looked at Jenny, and Jenny went over to let some light in. Then she opened the window wide. It’s such a lovely day, she said and turned to her sister. You’ve been lucky, she told her. It would be nice if it lasts all the time you’re here, but I doubt it. It changes all the time, doesn’t it? She turned to me for confirmation.

  I agreed and Christine shrugged slightly. It wouldn’t matter, she said.

  And here’s my lovely Michael, Jenny announced with a sort of flourish, as if to show she’d saved the best for last. She moved to the bed where he’d been sleeping beside me and lifted him, just waking now with a quiet grumble, up to her shoulder.

  Christine’s expression didn’t change at all. The same shy grin. She took a step forward and stared dutifully at the back of Michael’s head.

  Jenny rocked him gently, sniffed him, then offered him to her sister. His nappy’s clean, she said. You’re a good boy, she told Michael as she let go.

  Right from the start, I remember, there was a kind of awkward reserve about the way Christine handled him, as if she was too conscious of indulging a desire. She wouldn’t lose herself, wouldn’t give anything of herself away even to a sleepy baby. Michael, I think, loved it – loved the relief maybe from the needier love of his mother. And Jenny sensed it too. I remember her look of mild surprise as Michael stopped squirming in Christine’s slim arms, then the wavering, pained smile appearing on her lips as her baby lay pinned and biddable under her sister’s cool, teasing stare.

  You’re good with him, Jenny said at last. He likes you. You’re lucky – mostly he gripes if he’s away from me. He even makes a fuss with Luke sometimes. Doesn’t he? she said to me.

  I agreed.

  Christine laughed lightly.

  I’ll just get up, I said.

  Jenny took Michael back, jiggled him, then settled him on the bed. He was kicking but not yelling. She laid him down and he quieted.

  Let’s see your back, she said to me. She seated herself behind me on the edge of the bed.

  I sat up straight and shifted forward, letting her run her fingers over the sores. Most of them were in a band around my waist and the small of my back.

  They’re like chicken pox, aren’t they? she said. There was a murmur of agreement and I realised Christine had moved behind me too, leaning inwards across the bed.

  Don’t move, Jenny said, and I felt breath on my shoulder. Whose? I wondered. They’ve not got any bigger, she went on. Are they itchy?

  No. Not really.

  She ran a fingertip over a cluster of them. You’ve gone skinny again, she said.

  I nodded.

  Do you feel like eating? Christine didn’t have anything on the train, so I’ll go and buy something nice soon.

  Don’t you go, said Christine. I’ll go and get something for us.

  There’s no need. Stay and talk to Luke. I can go, or there’s plenty of boring food in the cupboards.

  I’d like to go, she said, and this time Jenny let it pass.

  They’re dry, anyway, she said, touching the sores again. I never had chicken pox, so I don’t know if that’s what it is. You never did either, did you? she said to Christine.

  No, Christine murmured.

  I don’t think you ever had anything. You were never ill, were you?

  Christine laughed. I must have been sometimes. I don’t know.

  No, Jenny said, more definite this time. I don’t remember you ever being ill.

  I don’t know.

  There was a brief, awkward silence.

  Well what do you think? I said.

  They’re not worse. I thought they might get bigger, or itchy, you know?

  She was stroking me now, absent-mindedly running her whole hand around the small of my back and a little way along the spine.

  How do you feel over all? she asked.

  Better. Not so tired. I’ll get up anyway.

  Mm. Maybe it’s good that the sores have come out. Maybe it’s like a fever breaking or something.

  Maybe.

  Coming out to the surface. She sounded almost dreamy now.

  I wondered what Christine was looking at, what she was seeing. I couldn’t see her, but I could feel the pressure of her knee on the edge of the mattress behind me.

  Isn’t he hairy? Jenny said, sweeping her hand upwards to my shoulders, and they both laughed. One of them plucked at a hair and they giggled like kids again.

  While Christine unpacked in the living room I got out of bed and dressed, then went up to the bathroom. When I got back down Jenny was telling her about my time on Pugh’s farm. It was so sad, she was saying. He was living in a little caravan, all alone except for two mad farmers. When I first met him he could hardly string a sentence together, he was so shy. She laughed, looking at me, then reached out to tug at my hand. Weren’t you? she insisted. My little savage. You were like one of those iron age hunters who’d been frozen in the Alps and suddenly got defrosted.

  It wasn’t so bad, I said, shrugging.

  Now he’s nearly civilized. He can read and write and everything. She laughed again and I felt myself starting to blush. He still has a bit of trouble shaving though.

  It was true – I hadn’t felt inclined to shave since falling ill and now my face was hairy as a cat’s. Jenny hadn’t commented on it until now, but it occurred to me suddenly that underneath the teasing she was disappointed that I hadn’t made the effort for Christine. I felt tired, and too warm, and wished I could crawl back onto the bed again. No-one spoke for a while, then Jenny said more seriously: what made you want to go up there in the first place? You never really told me.

  Work, I said, surprised by the question. I’d never even asked it myself
, even in the middle of the worst nights alone on the hill.

  But you could have easily got work in town.

  I shrugged again, feeling a little dizzy. I hadn’t eaten all day, and maybe because of that the simple, unexpected questions felt confusing in some way. I didn’t want to be in town, I said, and tried to smile to cover my awkwardness.

  Why? Christine broke in, almost sharply, and suddenly I could feel her eyes on me, intent, anticipating. I opened my mouth but nothing came. Somehow Jenny was excluded now, and this stranger was demanding my attention.

  I don’t know, I said, and the moment passed, and Jenny started talking about something else, and Christine turned her face politely to listen.

  I left them and went through to the bedroom. I felt shaken, as if I’d been on trial and lured to the edge of a confession, and had barely pulled back. I didn’t know what the confession would have been, didn’t know what had made Christine light up and bear in on me like that, but it left me with a strange, bereft feeling, and I went over to Michael’s cot and stared hard at him sleeping there. I wanted to wake him. I had a bad feeling that he was more than asleep, that he was unconscious, in trouble. I pushed the feeling down and moved to the window. There was a breeze picking up off the sea and out beyond the bay a few whitecaps were starting to show. I waited there for a while, taking in the fresh air and waiting for my mood to lift, then closed the window and went back through to the living room.

  How’s Michael? Jenny asked as I came through. They were both sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the bookcase, facing each other, a pile of children’s books between them.

  Fine, I said. He’s quiet.

  You should tell Chris and me some stories about your time on the farm, Jenny said.

  I don’t have any.

  She sniffed. We’ve been looking at the books we used to read when we were little. I kept them all. She turned back to her sister. Here’s the animals book, remember? It was our favourite. We used to fight over it.

  She offered it to Christine, who took it but didn’t open the cover. It was an old-fashioned children’s picture book from the sixties, full of sentimental drawings of puppies, hippy-maned ponies, kittens and so on. She showed it to me not long after we started spending Sunday afternoons in bed together.