Mercy Seat Page 4

  Remember when I wrote names under all the animals? I wrote them really artistically I thought. She turned to me. Even though Chris was younger than me, when I showed her what I’d done, really proud, you know, she said it was stupid and I’d ruined the beautiful pictures. Can you imagine? She was only about five, and I was about seven and thought she was bound to be impressed by it. I was stunned. I thought my names were so sophisticated. She laughed and Christine laughed too, but still didn’t open the book. She was staring at the big blue kitten on the cover as if trying to recall it, though when Jenny asked her if she remembered it all she nodded confidently.

  I gave them all names of drinks, like Brandy and Sherry and Whisky! God, what are kids like?

  Christine handed the book back. I remember, she said.

  I’m keeping it for Michael, Jenny told her.

  Christine went out at four to buy food for the evening meal. Jenny cleaned and fed Michael and sent me to get plates and cutlery from the communal kitchen we shared with our own floor and the next floor up.

  On the stairs I passed Clement. He was with a tall, stooping, middle-aged man. They’d just come out of an empty room opposite the stairs at the end of the passage and were talking in Welsh. When he saw me Clement pushed his steel-framed glasses up along the bridge of his nose. He was without his tool bag for once and seemed almost naked – somehow exposed and ridiculous – without it. He knew Christine was visiting and staying a while, and he didn’t like it. Not many tenants would ever have wanted what he called his suite though, and we’d taken it long term, so we had some leverage.

  Has your visitor arrived then? he asked stiffly, switching to English. I saw a stranger on the stairs just now; I thought it must be her.

  That’s right, Mr Clement. Arrived this afternoon.

  It’s as well I know what she looks like.

  I agreed.

  She seemed quiet enough, anyhow.

  No need to worry about that, I said.

  No. Well, well, he said. He turned back to the man and I slipped past them and up to the kitchen.

  When I came back down they were gone but the door to the room they’d come out of was still wide open. I put my head inside. It was a big square room, well lit by the strong afternoon sun that streamed in through the motes of dust. There was the usual set-up: wash hand basin in the corner, double bed, an old, dark-veneered wardrobe, big as a sarcophagus. I noticed the little list of regulations hanging in a grubby plastic frame near the door. The name of the guesthouse, Bethesda, had been typed into a space left blank for it. So had the numbers for things like breakfast hours, how many people allowed per room, that kind of thing. We’d taken our own list down so long ago I’d forgotten all about it. The image came into my mind of a younger, fresh-faced Clement, full of hopes and plans, typing the same incongruous chapel name into the blanks of each list some twenty or thirty years ago, and suddenly the bright emptiness of the room seemed somehow funereal, like an undertaker’s well-lit parlour.

  I wondered if he’d been trying to rent it out, or if something needed fixing. Usually when someone new was seeing a room on our floor he’d come and introduce us. He seemed to think it was a nice touch. The only one it ever worked on was Alex, the student teacher. He carried on popping in on us for days after he arrived until I put him straight about it.

  I told Jenny about meeting Clement and the stranger while I waited to hand her the plates. She’d opened out the folding table and wanted to improvise a tablecloth from a spare bed sheet before the plates went on it.

  If he’s moving in, he’d better like the sound of a baby crying, she said.

  Jenny was always a little hostile and defensive whenever someone new arrived on our floor: she was convinced that one day soon there would be one too many complaints about the noise Michael made and we’d be forced to move out.

  It’ll be fine, I said. He was looking at the room at the far end of the corridor, near the stairs. There’d be three other rooms between us.

  Michael had woken up for the evening, and once the table was laid I went through to occupy him.

  He won’t sleep now, Jenny called from the other room. He’s already slept more than usual.

  I know, I said. I dangled a few toys into the cot, then played hide-and-seek with my face through the bars. He regarded me with a strange, solemn expression. Behind me I heard Christine letting herself in.

  Hi, she called. I’m back.

  Come and see this, I said over my shoulder.

  Still holding the plastic carrier bag she’d come in with, Christine came and stood at my side. I was crouched down, level with her hips.

  I pulled a face at him through the bars, ducked away then reappeared in the same spot. Look at his face. Look how serious he is, I said.

  Jenny was through now, standing in the doorway watching us.

  Look, I said to them both. I’ve never seen him so serious.

  I pulled a face again, but he wasn’t looking at me now, he was staring up at Christine.

  Christine shifted her stance. He wants to know who I am, she said.

  There was quiet for a few seconds.

  He’s just frightened with you all staring at him, said Jenny, and there was a tightness in her voice. She moved in between myself and Christine and lifted him from the cot. Then she didn’t seem to know what to do with him.

  I’ll take him to the window, I said.

  She hesitated. Don’t be funny with him, she said. Let him be. Just be nice and peaceful with him.

  We stood facing each other. I was conscious of Christine focusing on me again, waiting. Waiting for what?

  Come on Jen, I said at last. Give him to me. I’ll show him the birds. He likes that. I took him from her.

  There wasn’t much conversation while we ate. Christine had bought cold Indian food from the corner shop. Some of it was stale and dry but nobody mentioned it. Jenny picked at hers in between fussing with Michael in his high chair. He wasn’t eating much either.

  How about I go down to the big kitchen and bring up some wine? I said at last. I looked at Jenny and she shrugged.

  Is there any left?

  A few bottles of that elderflower stuff your mother made. I’ll go and see.

  Well, it might be nice to have a drink. It might be relaxing.

  Christine said nothing.

  I’ll go then, I said.

  The big kitchen was in the basement of the guesthouse and used to be where all the breakfasts and afternoon teas were prepared by the Clements. In fact, you could still book in for half-board and eat in the cellar dining room – it was kept locked but always laid out neatly behind the glass-panelled door, the way ancient tombs were laid out with goblets and bowls all ready for the afterlife – but nobody did that any more as far as we could tell. Instead, the tenants had the use of the basement kitchen, along with the smaller one on the top floor, to cater for themselves. The basement hobs and ovens were filthy but the students living on the lower floors cooked in it without making a fuss. Some of them even ate there, sat together at the long wooden chopping tables like kids in a school canteen.

  I managed to get down to the basement without running into Clement again. Their sitting room door was open and I had to go past it to reach the stairs, but their TV was blaring and no one came out.

  In the kitchen a couple of students were crouched down at the foot of one of the black industrial-size hobs lining the near wall. They were laughing together, but looked up and nodded when they heard me open the door. One of them was trying to grow a soft little ginger beard. He’d introduced himself to me at some point earlier in the year but I couldn’t remember his name. I didn’t recognise his friend. I nodded back and stepped through the door.

  Luke, man, come and see this roach, the ginger one said.

  I went over to where they were squatting. A long black cockroach was labouring around on the tiles between their feet. It had a dod of orange jelly on its back, weighing it down.

  We put my mother’s
home-made marmalade on it, the ginger student explained.

  We thought it might dissolve the fucker. They both rocked with silent laughter.

  The roach was nearly out of sight now. Its legs were splayed by the extra weight into something like paddles and finally its painfully slow rowing took it to shelter between the feet of the iron hob.

  The others might eat it, because of the marmalade, the visitor mused.

  The ginger boy snorted.

  You’ve been ages, Jenny complained when I got back with two bottles of wine. Give Christine a hand with the dishes upstairs while I try to get Michael interested in something.

  In the smaller upstairs kitchen Christine had finished washing the plates and was inspecting one of the communal tea towels. It was damp and badly stained.

  They’re all like that, I apologised. Just leave the dishes to drain is the best thing.

  She stood for a while, looking around her. She seemed reluctant to head back down. I had the feeling she was waiting for me to go on.

  It’s just that we share the kitchen, you know? I’ll have to show you the kitchen in the basement sometime. It’s an experience. I saw the roach again in my mind’s eye, its ugly splayed legs dragging its body under the iron range.

  She smiled and folded the tea towel neatly before laying it down on the worktop. I passed a man on the stairs when I came up first, she said. Was that the landlord?

  A tall guy with white hair? Metal-rimmed glasses?

  She nodded. I think so. He had glasses.

  That’s Clement, I said. He’s okay, really. A bit strange, mind.

  How do you mean?

  Religious strange.

  Oh.

  When we came looking for rooms he told us we couldn’t have them unless we were married. He made me show him the certificate, in fact, though he was good to us after that, once he’d seen it. He might invite you to a Sunday service if he sees you around a bit more. Just about all the tenants get asked. Some of the students actually go.

  Have you ever gone with them?

  Christ, no.

  I felt a faint wave of guilt talking about Clement that way, behind his big, stooped, handyman’s back. The truth was he reminded me of my grandfather, and though he made Jenny nervous and impatient, I was always easy, if a little sad, in his company.

  She looked around and wiped her palms on her skirt. It was pale blue and full-cut, cool and airy looking. I couldn’t remember if it was what she was wearing when she arrived. So what do you believe in? she said abruptly.

  I laughed. Nothing much.

  Is that why you’re unhappy?

  I laughed despite myself. I’m not unhappy. What makes you say that?

  I can always tell. It’s because I work with children. They don’t know how to hide things the same way we do, so you learn what to look for.

  I’m not unhappy.

  She shook her head indulgently and I couldn’t help smiling at her self-assurance.

  Okay. Well what do you believe in? I asked.

  She bowed her head and looked down at her feet for a while, as if summoning up some reserve of strength, or patience. What I believe, she said carefully, is that the living and the dead are just as real as one another, but it’s like different languages. Like the way something can be real for two people, but if the language is different you can’t talk about it. You can’t share it. But it’s not that it’s not real, it’s just not your language. That’s the only religious thing I believe now. She finished, a little breathlessly.

  I don’t think I understand that, I said, startled.

  No, she said. I don’t expect you to. Though I don’t mean anything supernatural, she added, but didn’t explain further.

  Jenny had warned me that her sister had been brought up very differently to herself after their parents’ divorce, and was full of strange ideas. It was their father’s fault, she said: he’d run a one-man general practice in Rhondda Fach to begin with, and their early childhood had been conventional enough, but after the separation he’d converted to some tiny Christian sect, quickly becoming its sole voice and authority and using the house as a church for the small congregation. The girls were eleven and nine then, and Christine – who’d always been closer to her father than to Jenny and her mother, ‘under his spell’ as Jenny put it – insisted on staying with him. For a year or so their mother had fought for custody in the courts, but Christine waged a much fiercer war in return, hardly eating or speaking, taking a scissors to Jenny’s clothes more than once, and running away from school to their father at every opportunity. In the end, after two years of chaos, their mother despaired of trying to win her. By then, their father’s evangelicalism had hardened into something stranger: he gave up the general practice and opened a centre for spiritual preparation instead: an advance outpost for the second coming. His followers were made up almost entirely of women, some with children, and soon he was running it all in the style of some American ranch cult. There were rumours, of course, about the women and the young girls. When Jenny’s mother discovered that he’d made an application to the local authority to educate Christine himself with the help of private tutors, she contacted the social services and the police, making all kinds of accusations. Not long after her fourteenth birthday Christine was taken into care, briefly, but none of the accusations stuck and soon she was back in the big, detached house in Rhondda Fach that had once been the family home, furious and more contemptuous than ever of her mother, and more implacably devoted to her father.

  He was twelve months dead now, something Jenny had discovered only in the spring when Christine had broken a silence of ten years to write her a brief letter, and I wondered if her clumsy outburst had simply been her way of invoking him – conjuring him up somehow to be with us – right from the start. I’d already learned from Jenny that she’d left the cult at eighteen to train as a primary school teacher, and in fact the group had fizzled away at about that time until all that were left were one or two of the more desperate and vulnerable hangers-on. But she’d stayed loyal to the man himself if not his beliefs, and had nursed him for a year through the series of heart attacks that weakened and finally killed him.

  Christine looked up from studying her feet then and considered me instead for a moment, not meeting my eye but staring hard at my chest in that distant but curious way she had, then laughed freely, as if she’d been playing a game with me all the time. You’re much younger than I expected, she announced.

  I shrugged, nonplussed.

  Let’s go back down, she said lightly, and led the way.

  Jenny was sitting upright on the edge of the sofa watching TV, a big black and white valve set that Clement had brought up to the room ‘to help you keep the little one occupied, see,’ soon after we moved in. It had to be thumped into life most evenings, and whined faintly, like a creature, when we switched it off at night. Michael was floundering at Jenny’s feet. As I hunted out three wine glasses I heard her explain to Christine that he was learning to crawl.

  Where are the bottles? I called through.

  In the fridge. Leave them a while to get cold. That wine’s no good unless it’s cold.

  I laid the glasses on the coffee table in front of the TV, then sat on the arm of the sofa next to Jenny. I don’t want to wait too long, I said. I’m getting quite tired. I’m not right yet.

  I know. I can tell. We won’t wait long. She rested her head against my side.

  I shifted my leg to balance the new weight of her leaning against me. I was feeling waves of heat roll over me and the waistband of my jeans was starting to irritate the sores. I put a hand through the buttons of my shirt and tried to ease the rash away from where the denim was pressing. The sores felt more prominent now – small, hard, fiery nubs.

  Michael had wormed his way to the low coffee table and was trying to get at the glasses. I leaned forward and pulled him back, which started him grizzling. Leaning forward made me dizzy and I felt a rush of irritation with Jenny for being too abs
orbed with the TV to shift Michael herself.

  What is this anyway? I asked.

  It’s an old film with Bob Hope. Him and his friend are out of work.

  Oh, great.

  Well we’re enjoying it. She looked at her sister for confirmation.

  I’m happy, Christine agreed. I like the old black and white films. I like them best.

  I was starting to sweat quite freely now, which made the sores around my waist and back itch even more.

  Michael was almost at the glasses again. For Christ’s sake, Michael, I said and fetched him back more roughly, making him bawl. Keeping hold of his middle I lifted him to my shoulder and carried him through into the bedroom. I sat with him on the bed and talked nonsense and hummed tunes till he’d calmed back down, then gave him my watch to play with. Soon, Jenny brought through his bottle, kissed me on the forehead, and disappeared back to the film while I fed him. He sucked greedily at the teat, staring at my face with grey, wide open eyes until the bottle was empty. It was long past his usual bedtime but he didn’t seem sleepy at all.

  It’s always open season on princesses, Bob Hope told someone. The sun was low now and the weak beams were angled flat across the room. Jenny said something to Christine that I couldn’t catch. Soon after I heard the door on the mini-fridge opening and a clink as one of them drew a bottle out. There was quiet for a while. In the movie, a woman with a soft English accent was speaking low and earnestly as if her life depended on what she was saying.

  Come back through for some wine, Jenny called. Don’t be such a hermit.

  The wine, like all the wine Jenny’s mother used to make and send us, was cloying even though it had cooled off. It was strong, too, and soon the phases of heat and chill blended into one long, numb sweat. The film ended without my noticing, and soon Jenny and Christine were occupied with Michael and steadily working their way through the last bottle, though it was Jenny doing most of the drinking. The itching around my middle seemed to have stopped, but I kept catching myself gouging at the sores anyway. I felt profoundly sad, but had no idea why.